American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Ernest Patton, Jr. (Rip), 1 of 2

ok, the first thing I wanted to ask you was to talk to the you can take our mattress thing before we leave. Do you want to start there? Is that good for you? We can start there. ok, what do you think you well one way start would be to say we made up songs and then say you can take our mattress and then sing a couple of verses or so and then when you're finished you can go right into what it would do to the cars. Ok. Do you think you can do all that? I can give you one verse, one good verse, and that's the mattress verse cause we didn't have very much that they could take. Ok so say we made up a verse to the song ok while we were in parchment we did a lot of singing and when they wanted us to stop we would always start singing and one of the songs that we were singing for example they took our mattresses one time or threatened to take mattresses and we started singing you can take our mattress oh yes you can take our mattress oh yeah you can take our mattress you can take our mattress you can take our mattress oh

yeah and of course we would go, we'd add verses, and the guards they just hated it because we would sing all the time but whenever they would take something away from us that was the one song that they would hear. Diane was a very special person. She came from Chicago and as the Reverend would say "up south". They had the same kind of segregation that we had here in Nashville the difference was they didn't have the signs, they didn't have the colored signs and the white signs She came to Nashville because she wanted to be a student at Fisk number one, number two she want to marry someone from the area medical college and when she went downtown and found out that things are different she saw the signs and she knew that she couldn't be served this brought about a change in her life and then when Dr Lawson came to Nashville and started teaching the workshops she became very interested in the workshops and

the rest is history So talk about Diane Nash. Like I said I saw Diane Nash was like eyes on the prize 20 years after and I was thinking Oh my God, who was that? well diane nash came from chicago she enrolled at Bisk she had planned to come to nashville and enroll at Bisk and find her education from Fisk and find her husband at Mary which was right across the street she went downtown one day and found out that things were a little bit different than in chicago. CT Vivian refers to chicago as up south and they just don't have the sign they didn't have the colored signs the white signs but when Diane went downtown she saw the signs the white signs and the colored signs and she said well I need to do something about this and then when

dr lawson came to nashville and started the workshops she became a part of the workshops and the next thing you know she was in a sense our leader one of our student leaders. I wasn't going to ask you this but you just reminded me and Diane Nash was so fine and she was so cute you know catherine carpenter you know there's a photo of her in that dress you know I was just thinking that I was wondering how many people were recruited to the movement because there were some of these fine women well that was a different time when we were in school we dressed. You didn't find a lot of kids wearing jeans and sweatshirts we dressed

quite often and you could tell the dress was a form of identity you could tell the guys that were from east st louis or from birmingham simply because of the hats or their shoes or their suits and so the ladies they dressed the only time i ever wore for example jeans and sweat shirt was because i was in a band and i had band rehearsal in the evening but during the day I even dressed that was just the way it was in the day I was a little younger but I would go on marches and when I was in high school I know for me a lot of times it was the women that would get made up. You guys are young guys.

well another thing happens a lot of the workshops where fisk university are an area fisk university and this was a motive for some nice looking ladies at that time. Matter of fact my wife and i met at fisk university but we would that was a time when the ladies looked good they dressed well and i don't think it was that the men were following the women it's just that that was a time when we were getting involved in the civil rights movement and i don't think it had anything to do with the women well but I will tell you something that happen in one of the meetings a young man asked dr lawson said now if this lady is sitting next to me at a lunch counter and she is attacked what am i supposed to do and Dr Lawson said you're not supposed to do anything

you're suppose to maintain and not do a thing and the reason was that if this young lady is here because she wants to be a part of the movement and she knows that that is possible that she will be attacked so i don't have anything to do boyfriend girlfriend and what have you and trying to catch and all of that them do it all he know was that catherine was going to Fisk and he wanted to know why are you going to do that because that was something most of the tennessee state guys would we go to Fish because that's where the better looking ladies or the ones who were financially a little bit better off than the ones who went to Tennessee state but he didn't want any part of the movement but he knew his girlfriend was going up there and finally he joined but I don't think it

had... he joined well i think basically that was in the heinz county jail simply because the way the jail was set up in the heinz county jail we would sing back and forth we had a small group in our jail cell that was naturally consisted of all black males and we had a quartet and i was part of the quartet and we would sing to the ladies late at night when things were quiet and then they would sing back to us and the reason for that singing was to let them know that we were ok and they let us know that they were ok but rather than try to hollar out on how are you and things like that and we would always sing to them and then of course their response would be to sing to us to let us know that everything's alright

When we were in the heinz county jail we would wait late evening when things were quiet and the men would sing to the women and to let them know that everything ok in the men's part of the jail and the women would sing back to let us know that there are things ok with them one of the songs i can give you a few words was I know I know we'll meet again I know I know we'll meet again I know I know we'll meet again someday and there were other verses that that was basically what it was that eventually when we get out we would be together again and we would probably sing that song every night to them. But it wasn't the women was it

the women has nothing to do with it [laughing] how you know the has really galvanized and pushed people forward well here in nashville first of all we were trained for a few months probably six months or more we went into training on what to do in emergency situations we knew the inside and outside of the stores that were going to picket and so on april 13 i'm sorry February 13 1960 our first sit in here in nashville and it was a successful sit in and so we were for example sitting in at Woolworth and Woolworth was one of those stores nationwide and the thing just spread like wildfire throughout the united states because we were concentrating here in Nashville on Woolworths

Kress and other stores downtown because that was the only place to shop was downtown there were no shopping malls and shopping centers all the buses that you would have to ride downtown on they all would come downtown and do your shopping and you go home or as blacks were concerned that's what they did because you couldn't eat at the lunch counters so there were a lot of things that blacks couldn't so they'd do their shopping and go home and we put a change to that by having the sit in demonstrations so when we had sit ins if there were 12 stools at woolworths we knew to send 12 students into that store and the unique thing about that was when they were arrested we had twelve more students at the back of the store ready to fill those twelve empty seats and the object was to fill the jails and of course there was a lot of singing

going on in the city jails here in nashville they were overcrowded but the jails were filled as a matter of fact they had some of the sit in people they let them out as street sweepers and bernard was one of those street sweepers which gave him a chance to talk to people on the street because they had so many students in jail they had to find something to do with some of them and I think bernard was one of those that was able to get out and sweep the streets and talk to the passerby lies about the senate