American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with James Lawson, 3 of 4

[Color bars beep] [Lawson]: When Diane gave me a final phone call the day before I returned to Nashville to tell me what she was doing and all and confirmed the decision, and I agreed with the decision that we must intervene, the Nashville movement must intervene with the Freedom Ride. But I asked her also then to inform our colleagues about it, so I asked to call Martin Luther King, Jr., and to call Jim Farmer, the head of CORE, and to call the Attorney General of the country, Robert Kennedy. I lift that up specifically because of those are phone calls I could've made, but I insisted that our coordinator in Nashville, 22-year-old person, I think, at

the time, make those calls. I clearly believed very strongly that if we allowed the KKK two so burn buses and attack our people, who were on a peaceful demonstration for the purpose of increasing democracy and access for all sorts of people, that they would then have such a victory that we would face increasing violence on every, on every front from then on. From a nonviolent theoretical perspective I recognized that you cannot allow, in any kind of struggle, the enemy to

assault you and get away with it, stop your movement, and I've, I've -- this is one of the places where, theoretically, I see nonviolence and violent effort having a similarity. You strategize to beat the opponent at his own game. [Interviewer]: We have to cut. Uh, this was a turning point in the movement. If you can tell me that and why, why is this a turning point. Why is this a turning point? [Lawson] Well, I did not know how it was a turning point in 1961. [Interviewer] That's okay, that's okay. [Lawson] Yeah. [Interviewer] Just give me that now. You know, this was a turning point. [Lawson]: Number one, this decision to pick up the Freedom Ride became the ignition that gave people in Mississippi great courage to start their engagement

at directly confronting their rabidly tyrannical institutions. It encouraged the people of Alabama, um, to resist the Klan and to say were not going to allow you to stop us in our movement for justice and freedom and democracy. And that's why it became a turning point and why it caused, in fact, a wave of hope to go across the United States and the world. [Interviewer]: Great, okay. [Lawson]: There's a contrast here that's important. The president Kennedy was preparing for a first meeting with Prime Minister Khrushchev of the Soviet Union.

He wanted the Freedom Ride off the front pages and Robert Kennedy, his Attorney General agreed. Their whole intention initially was to get it stopped. It interferes with international affairs that we're having to deal with. But it's rather ironical that the thing that had the greater impact upon the world in 1961 was the Freedom Ride because it fed the ambitions of most of the rest of the world that we do not have to have the kind of world we have. We can have a better world. [Interviewer]: Great, um. [Different speaker inaudible] [Interviewer]: One of the things that, that the Freedom Rides does is to take this movement to the, to the

deepest South, and I think you called that a closed society. [Lawson]: Missis- [Interviewer]: Yeah, Mississippi. [Lawson]: Mississippi was a closed society. [Interviewer]: I don't want to talk about just Mississippi by itself. [Lawson]: Yeah. [Interviewer]: I want to talk about the deeper South here. [Lawson]: Mmm-hmm. [Interviewer]: So talk about that. The, the, I mean, I think that's one of the things that, you know, when you tell about the Freedom Rides today, who don't know anything about it, you know, someone who's 20 years old. Talk about this, this, this importance of taking this, of taking of this, this action to the deeper South. [Lawson]: I know this is very hard for people to understand but in 1960, a large section of the United States was as tyrannical and dictatorial as any Soviet Union or anyone else. This was the impact of Jim Crow law and the rigid segregation that took -- that was in Tennessee, Virginia North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,

Louisiana, Texas and the rest. From this vantage point, we may not understand that. But it was tyranny. People did not have the right to speak on their own behalf. They did not have the right according to that tyranny, to demonstrate to change, even to have peaceful assembly as the constitution says we have -- declares. So it was tyranny. The police forces were always being used as a way of suppressing and oppressing the people, especially black people and the poor. Mississippi could be called later on as a closed society in that day. The governor, the state police, all of the state governmental institutions were geared in the direction

of preserving segregation and the inferior's posture of black people as citizens of the United States. The whole business of slavery and its consequence of tyranny, across the country, had never been challenged, and, in a very real way, the Freedom Ride was a model -- going from Washington, D. C., intending to end in New Orleans -- was a model of a national strategy to strike at the heart of this Jim Crow law of this tyranny. [Interviewer]: Great, um. So, so, we're, we're back there. You guys, the in, in Nashville decide to kind of go [Lawson]: Mmm-hmm [Interviewer]: to, to, to kind of take on the Freedom Riders, to continue the Freedom Rides. Um, but, you know, the Freedom Rides was not their action. The Freedom Rides did not

start with you all in Nashville. [Lawson] Of course, but we saw the freedom ride of 1961 as a noble nonviolent method of going after a major area of Jim Crow tyranny. We had a Supreme Court decision that said it should not exist, but no one had challenged the practice, state by state, or airport by airport, or Greyhound bus station by Greyhound bus station. So the Freedom Ride was a very well strategized technique of direct action to make that happen. [Interviewer] Somebody said, I read a quote where somebody said, you know, only the Nashville movement had the fire [Lawson]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: to match that burning bus. What did they mean by that? [Lawson]: They meant by that that we had enough of a depth understanding of the necessity of developing mass action in a nonviolent fashion that the Anniston bus burning, which was the first big event that shocked the nation, was not an accident, but we could not allow it to prevail in the public mind. [Interviewer]: Talk about the the, the plan that, that, that, that came out of Nashville, which was kind of, you know, to send wave after wave, you know that, that, they, you know, they sent in one wave, they had another team waiting. [Lawson]: Yes. [Interviewer]: They had another team waiting. I mean, it was a plan. This was a plan. [Lawson] Yes. Again our central committee did its work of strategizing. We recognized that the first step was to immediately recruit a group of people, 10,

15, who would go to Birmingham and ride the bus, bus from Birmingham to Montgomery. So that was the first step, and as -- almost as soon as the central committee made that that decision, they started recruiting people and finding people and sending out the word and making the plan by which that first group could go to Birmingham. But we also recognized that that was only one leg, so we were also recruiting people then to go from Montgomery on the bus to Jackson, Mississippi, which was the next leg. So these things that the, the, the organizing for this began immediately. The mobile- mobilizing, recruiting, uh, preparing the, the, uh, structure that we would need in order to make it happen. Getting the money together. Getting NCLC to approve it. All of that was a part of

the picture of the central committee. So that started immediately. So we -- some people couldn't go on the first leg. I could not, but I was prepared to go on the leg from Montgomery to Jackson. And I told Diane that immediately: I can't go down today because I'm in Ohio, but I'll get back tomorrow and I'll be in the second wave. So we, we did plan several waves of people going on, on the Freedom Ride. [Interviewer] Mmm-hmm. Uh, Reverend Lawson, if you feel comfortable, I'd, I'd love you to just kind of say, that, that knowing what had happened to the, you know, the CORE group. [Lawson]: Mmm-hmm. [Interviewer] You knew that at this point, you know, so you know that, 13 people might not be enough. [Lawson] Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Interviewer] That we have to have reinforcements because we know what may happen. [Lawson]: Mmm-hmm, yes. We, we knew from the beginning that we had to try to organize as many different people as we could to participate in this endeavor. At the same time, I recognize that it would be probably be a

healthy thing if CORE or SCLE or the NAACP or other groups could cause waves of people maybe to go from Miami to Tampa [chuckles] or from Dallas to New Orleans. And so you had that effect -- that did get done across the country. But we knew we wanted hundreds of people to do it, not just a handful. A handful of people would be insufficient. [Interviewer] So from the Freedom Rides dying [Lawson]: It became a national issue. Instead of it being wiped off the front pages, it went on to the front pages of the whole world. Um, the Kennedy administration definitely wanted it to die out, in lieu of their international concerns, but we felt that government must be dealing with the well being of its own people, and I felt that then. [Interviewer]: Cut? [Different speaker]: Yes. [Lawson] I returned to Nashville,

therefore, the next day. I agreed to drive in the next wave to -- and that wave, instead of going to Birmingham, went to Montgomery. And, so five or six of us drove down all night and arrived in Montgomery early the next morning to take the bus from Montgomery to Jackson. So -- but it also happened then that the wave that did get on the bus from Birmingham to Montgomery were also met by about mob action and were severely beaten and injured. [Interviewer]: Yeah, we're gonna talk to, we, we, we already talked to a bunch of people. [Lawson]: Yeah. [Interviewer]: We're on it. [Lawson]: Mmm-hmm. [Interviewer]: So let, let, me ask you just, you got there, my understanding is, kinda the day after the church thing, or were you there for the... [Lawson]: No, I was not there the night. I got the next, there the next morning, yes. [Interviewer] Next morning, okay. [Lawson]: Because our, our, our aim from Nashville was to have a fresh group of people in Montgomery to proceed on the bus

to Jackson, Mississippi. [Interviewer]: Mmm-hmm, okay. I gotta couple more, uh, I got a bunch more, but I want [Multiple speakers, inaudible] at this point to kinda have this subtle change where, at first, you know, we're gonna to go down there and, and I think that we might have even been in the hope that, you know, we're not gonna have this violence. But once you know that, that there's this violence, was part that, that, was there this subtle change where the Freedom Rides are now are trying to force the federal government to intervene? [Lawson]: Well, there's already that hope in CORE, but by the time of the bus burning and afterwards, then there were other people who put pressures on Robert Kennedy and the President to intervene. So there was a lot of pressure then. And a very real mood of the traditional leadership of black people at

that time was then to say that, that, that the President must intervene, the President needed, needed to speak on this issue and needs to direct federal resources in such a way that the, that the riders could be protected and guaranteed their right to travel. [coughs] [Interviewer]: I'm gonna ask you, Reverend Lawson, to give me that as a statement, cause it kind of, it kind of, came into that silence, I don't know how to explain it. [Lawson]: Okay, yeah, uh-huh. [Interviewer]: But just say that, that, that, the traditional, at this point, many of the traditional leaders... [Lawson]: Yeah. [Interviewer]: Okay. [Lawson] At, at, at the point of the bus burning and the riot in Montgomery against the movement, Martin King and Jim Farmer, NAACP and other organizations in the country and elected officials began to put heat on the President and the Attorney General to intervene. Um, the federal government discovered that the Governor of, of Alabama would not

guarantee the safety of citizens of the country because they were black. They discovered that the Governor of Mississippi saw the Freedom Rides not as a peaceful demonstration but as an infringement upon white supremacy and the Southern way of life. So there was a rude awakening in the part of the Kennedy administration as to what they were facing in the United States. I will say it this way: Tyranny was a part of the democratic experiment from 1776 onward, in the form of slavery and the decimation of Indians. These things were ignored. There was of pretension that the nation was doing well, in spite of the pain of millions of Americans. This Freedom

Ride brought that pain onto the front pages and demanded that the federal government ought to protect the bill of rights for all Americans. [Interviewer]: Uh, that was actually gonna be part of my next question because I wanted you to talk a little bit about the press. You know, now you've got the press, the press is now, you know, the Freedom Rides start out, there's only black press members, you know, on, on, on [Lawson]: That's right, mmm-hmm. [Interviewer] But now you've got the press and you've got the attention of the North and the South, the South and the North. [Lawson] Yes, East and the West. [Interviewer] East and the West, yes. Talk about that, the, the, you know, what that means. [Lawson]: One of the things it meant was this. Well, the Freedom Ride at this stage meant that now CBS had reporters on the scene. That meant they took many images. A bus burning on a highway in one of the states of the United States with no police protection anywhere near or no fire department. Those, those images. Then the images of bus riders

being beaten in Montgomery almost to death, in Birmingham. Those images were all over television news stations, all over the radio. They were all over the world. So suddenly now there, the comm- the communications revolution has put the pain of Americans on the front pages. That's where media became a major instrument for social change. [Interviewer]: Mmm-hmm, okay, cut. Yes, making this up. I'm not making this up! [Lawson]: I know you found it in a book. [Interviewer]: I wasn't there. [Lawson]: I know you found it in a book. [Interviewer]: I wasn't there. ?Right, is that not true? [Lawson]: That's right. You were not there. [both chuckle]

And, now, now. [Interviewer]: Excuse me, I was 10. I was in New York. [Lawson] Yeah, I know. Okay. [Interviewer]: Is that going to happen. I mean, seriously. Are we rolling? [Lawson] I... [Interviewer] And you have to tell me, there's a story. So tell me, um what happened when, when, when some of the, I believe, the students in Nashville wanted King on the ride. [Lawson]: As the, as the ride regenerated itself, with the major energy coming from Nashville, there were a number of students, uh, and writers who wanted Martin King to go on the first leg of the ride that he could take with them. So there were major discussions and a lot of heat, I think, even anger at that Dr. Harris's house, during the night and the next day, where King declined to go. I

learned of this from my colleagues. I learned that Diane was one of the ones -- Diane Nash was one of the ones who wanted him to go. I disagreed with that strategy that certain people had that Martin King should be up on the ride because my own thesis was twofold and I taught this in Nashville and elsewhere: That you do not push a person to put, put themselves in danger in a demonstration or to go to jail unless they themselves fully were ready and willing to do it, that they saw that as a moment for themselves. That makes us different from a military unit, that our disciplined people must still give consent: I'm gonna go to jail tonight. I'm gonna go face that mob today. So that was that was a cardinal principle. So

I disagreed with the effort to make King a major target for getting on the ride. If he felt himself that this is my moment to be there then good. But if he did not -- Simply because he was Martin King and a major figure in the strugglem that was no reason then to try to force him to do so. Now, I've learned since then from uh, uh, another major source who was on the ride that that rider disagreed in the Harris discussions about King going on the ride if he was not ready to do so himself. [coughing] That point of view has not gotten in the books. [Interviewer]: Let's cut. Why is it students wanted Martin King to go so much? I mean, why, what were, what was his reason, given reason for declining? [Lawson]: Some students wanted King to go on the ride

then and there, from Montgomery to Jackson or soon after. There were some other voices that did not want to go. I think the folk ?who'd? pushing him to go were wanting to use him because he was the spokesperson and symbol of the struggle at that time and they wanted that to give them some kind of media edge and world edge. I think they were thinking more strategically than otherwise. They were not thinking from a point of view of nonviolence. He still had to -- each of us who went on that ride had to come to a moment in our own lives when we, where, when we felt we could do it, regardless of the cost. And that we could face whatever the unknown factors were, including the possibility of death. And in Nashville, our central

committee clearly raised and trained people around the fact that you might not come back, especially if the governors and police cooperate with the KKK for the purpose of attacking us. [Interviewer]: Why did, Ki- King, decline? Why, why did he say he wouldn't do it? [Lawson]: I do not remember all the reasons why King did not do it, but he was under, he was un- he was under probation of a prison term in Georgia. I know that was one factor. But my other sense is that, strategically, he did not see it as the thing for him to do. Now, even by this time, for the emerging, developing movement, he was the major strategist. He had to determine when the time was right for him to take

certain steps. I know of too many instances of this, where he wrestled long and hard about it. Um, people don't realize, for an example, but his April 4th, 1967, speech, "Beyond Vietnam," he wrestled for a long time: When is the right time and the right platform to make that speech? [Interviewer]: Okay. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, um, Medgar Evers, who was the Field Secretary of the NAACP, in Mississippi at that point, said that he hopes that the Freedom Rides would be postponed. [Lawson] Yes, right. [Interviewer]: Why ?didn't you? postpone it? [Lawson] All right. You must remember that in 1961, '61, there was a vigorous debate across the Black community, especially across the organized Black community, the community jus- organized for soc- social justice. Most people

did not see direct nonviolent action as a tool for the movement. The NAACP did not see that. Thurgood Marshall, in those years, thought that the legal strategy was the overarching strategy, that that kind of community action was unnecessary. But I, I relate that to two things. One, they hadn't really examined the history of social movements in the United States and the role of nonviolent direct action. They had not seen that and its role in the history of the nation. And secondly, they had not paid attention to the phenomenal emergence of Gandhi codifying

direct action to change political, um wrong and, and Gandhi had not invented nonviolence. He simply pulled so much together from the past into his own work and experimentation. So I, I know that debate. I think that was often outside of the King circles and a necessary debate because very clearly nonviolent struggle in 1955, 1957, in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in '57, '58, in the Sit-In campaign in 1960, had tremendous impact upon the spirituality and the morale and the aspirations of millions of

people.