American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Ken Grove, 1 of 2

[background sounds] [Interviewer] Can you talk to me about when you first heard the Freedom Riders and what was the sentiment? [Grove] Well I was a newspaper boy with the Alabama Journal, which is no longer published, but we carried the evening paper and stories had been in the paper for days and of course on the news at night and the community was just all a-buzz, you know, "why are these outside agitators coming to Montgomery to mess up our life," was kind of the by-word of the day in many many conversations, so there was an acute awareness that something was coming and maybe a little bit of disbelief that anybody would have the audacity to carry that through, so it was very much of interest in the news. [Interviewer] Do you remember that day, what-- or the day before, what the general feeling was in the town? [Grove] Well there was tension, I mean it was, people here especially in the white community and my peers, I was a teenager at the time, you know, didn't

really see it as a struggle of people trying to establish their rights, you know, and that sort of thing, it was seen more as "somebody coming to take our lifestyle away from us" was kind of the common perspective so there was a lot of anxiety about it and a lot of concern. But the conversations about it that I recall were not, you know, a question of rights or constitutional law or anything like that, it was more "disruption of our well-established system that we like very well, thank you." [Interviewer] What was that system, how would you-- I'm sure you've had to talk about it a lot in your life, as somebody who fled here, you know, what was that lifestyle? [Grove] Well it was-- everything was segregated, you know, the races never met except under very constrained conditions. It was common to have domestic help of another race and my siblings and I were raised by black women basically during the day, my mother worked, and that sort of thing, that was ok and those relationships were good and it seemed to occur in a world apart.

Black people did yardwork, they carried out groceries in the grocery stores, they were always kind of on the fringes and that's the way this community came together was on the fringes. When you came downtown to Dexter Avenue, you know, the black business district was over on Molton, and the two races almost never mixed, even in their use of downtown, it was very very separated. [Interviewer] What was the feeling, or was there any feeling about what black people were thinking? I mean, was it thought that they were happy, or was it not thought? [Grove] They were generally viewed to be happy, you know, the common attitude was "well they're not complaining, it's not our folks, it's these folks from outside coming in to rile things up," and that was the reaction that was probably a widely held view that "we've worked things out and separate but equal work for us," and so that there was just no-- well amongst most of my friends and colleagues, no empathy or no ability to put themselves in someone else's

position and try to imagine what things would be like. Again because the interactions were limited, I never had a black fellow student the entire time I was in the Montgomery Public Schools. And that was all the way from first grade through high school. [Interviewer] But before there was kind of this stirrings or little awakenings of civil rights, what was it that people-- was there any thought that you have this system where obviously there's nobody in the world who wouldn't argue that black people were in the lower half of the system, so was there a feeling that black people were happy with this, or did people keep completely ignoring this, you know what I mean? [Grove] I know what you mean, I think if people had doubts they were certainly wishing that everybody was happy and that change was not going to come. I mean I think there was a lot of "we've got our way of life, we out to be in

charge of it," very states' rights sort of thing and not a lot locally, we didn't have a lot of local leadership, in fact it was surprising when white people would say anything about it and generally it was, it was ignored. [Interviewer] Just a little bit, talk a little bit about-- your family had this kind of unique perspective on it because your father weren't from here. [Grove] My father and mother weren't from here, my father was from New York and my mother from the state of Utah, they met during World War Two in the Army Air Corps and he was later recruited by the Air Force to be at Maxwell Air Force Base so we kind of saw from a different perspective because we were aware that on-base life was a lot different, black people were involved in responsible jobs at that time and it was just an entirely different world contrast completely between life on Maxwell Air Force Base and life in the community. My father was very careful to instruct us on the right way to

look at life and how to empathize with other people and I remember once asking him how he dealt with Air Force Generals all the time and he said "son, we're all men, we put our pants on one leg at a time," and he went on further to say "and that's the-- there's no difference between the races, we all put our pants on one leg at a time," and that was kind of the perspective that we grew up with. So I felt at times threatened by my peers and friends when they would get off on the racist diatribes they had been taught and the nonsensical things they would say and unfortunately I learned very early on it was better just to keep my opinions to myself and not to try to engage in conversation. And that was true when I was a younger teenager but as we got more towards high school there were a few people who began to think about things not being right. There was enough experience, there had been enough things in the news, and of course we were getting older and more aware of the

world so there were a few people who could have a reasonable discussion about issues of race and civil rights and that sort of thing. So it wasn't completely absent from Montgomery, Alabama, there's always been some here, but from the popular culture that was all really just kind of strictly segregated and very traditional. [Interviewer] One of the things that we've been talking about is that, one of the things is that seemed like the Civil Rights Movement did, and you talked about getting your friends who-- it was kind of a crack, it wasn't breaking it open in 1961 but one of the things that the Civil Rights Movement wanted to do was to make people see, at least confront the fact that everybody wasn't happy. [Grove] And I think it was very successful in doing that, one of the most successful human change events that has occurred in maybe the history of the world because the

attitudes were so hardened, rigid, against, I mean you just couldn't convince some people that we were all the same kind of people in any respect and that the beliefs that I heard expressed, I can't even repeat anymore, we don't use that kind of language anymore and say those kinds of things, but you know strings of stereotypes and epithets and all kinds of dire things. Yet every once in a while you would meet a person who's very friendly to people of the other race and very kind while still maintaining that rigid segregation at some point, "we can be friends at work," perhaps and "we can interact," there were always examples of great generosity in people helping out people who were black that they knew, that sort of thing, so it wasn't completely separated in all respects, but for the most part yes it was. [Interviewer] I want to ask you that again, because I think you didn't say "the Civil Rights Movement," and I think it's kind of an important statement because I'm asking everybody at the end, I usually wait till the end, what did this movement accomplish, and

you don't have to-- but I love the fact that you talk about it-- the biggest changes in the history of the world because these beliefs were so entrenched-- [Grove] Yes. [Interviewer] And what now is a is kind of ex-- people-- it's changed. So what was accomplished? [Grove] What was accomplished was we all became aware of the rights that we all share and enjoy. It's as simple as that. No one has any more rights than they're willing to grant to other people. And that was all the perspective of a lot of white people was "they're coming to take my lifestyle or my rights away from me," that whole thing changed because you begin to realize well, "this applies to all of us, and what's a good law for one is a good law for everyone." [Interviewer] Ken, if you don't mind, I'll ask you to start something with "Civil Rights Movement accomplished one of the biggest changes in the history of the world," and why. [Grove] Well the Civil Rights Movement accomplished one of the biggest, most dramatic, and

fastest changes in the history of the world in my view and there have been many conflicts that have lasted longer, even centuries, but in a very few short years they changed a system that was entirely unworkable and unmanageable and established for everyone what our civil rights are and not just the rights for white people but the rights for black people and all people everywhere, and it really set a standard that the world can look to. We in the south and we in this country have established a human rights document through actions and through laws that is the standard for the entire world in my view. [Interviewer] Mm-hmm. When your friends or people would go off on these diatribes and you talked about what people would say, in

private to themselves, what did they say? [Grove] Can I use the n-word? [Interviewer] You can use whatever you want. [Grove] Which I don't like to do. I remember one occasion, we were hunting in the backwoods of rural Macon or Montgomery County somewhere and we got lost. There were four of us in the pickup truck and we saw a black man walking down the road and decided we'd ask him for directions about where to go and I was on the passenger side so I rolled down the window and not really thinking, I said, "Sir, can you tell us how to get from where we are to where we want to go?" and nobody said anything and he told us which way to go. I rolled up the window and turned around and here were three guys with shotguns just as big as mine and they said "don't you ever say 'sir' to a nigger." And those were the kinds of things that were just very intimidating situations that were unnerving and it was just really difficult to get past that, at least for

me. [Interviewer] Okay, let's stop for a second. You already answered it, but talk about what you, growing up, were deprived of. [Grove] Well obviously deprived of any meaningful contact with-- [Interviewer] I'm sorry, you have to say "I was deprived of." [Grove] I was deprived of any meaningful contact with people in my own age cohort who were the other race. The people who I met were yardmen, people at grocery stores, almost never anyone of my own age cohort and what we learned after the Civil Rights Movement is that we were deprived of a lot of really meaningful and unique human relationships, just normal everyday day-to-day interactions. The experience of all people that we now enjoy quite freely and even on my own staff at the city of Montgomery were just about fifty-fifty and we have meaningful interactions every day, we have friendships, families invite each other over for dinner, and that never happened

before in that way. You could have domestic help at your house who would fix meals and even serve you and that would be the limit of it, but you never got to know anybody personally, there were never any opportunities for friendship and I think we were pretty much deprived by all of that. [Interviewer] Let's talk about that day. So at this point, I mean, it took the Freedom Riders so long to get to Montgomery, that not only did you know they were coming, but the whole world probably at that point knew they were coming. What was the feeling here in Montgomery? [Grove] ell the feeling here in Montgomery, there was obvious tension. My peers were talking about it, it was an everyday topic. Some speculation that they'd never even be able to make it this far. Those kinds of

conversations, but when we learned they were en route and almost an hour certain when they would arrive, there was a lot of tension. I was working at the newspaper, we used to have our group meetings at the newspaper building on occasion and it must have been one of those occasions on that particular day and we remember hearing that the Freedom Riders were here and that a mob had assembled and some people tried to get up to the roof of the building to see if they can see it, the station is just a couple of blocks from where the advertiser print building was at the time. And a couple of us went out the front door, started walking, maybe down Washington Avenue in all likelihood, and got down maybe a block or block and a half and saw people running in the direction of the bus station which we couldn't see directly. We were looking down Washington Avenue which doesn't align with it and saw people with sticks and bats and

very angry countenances and lots of shouting, you could tell they were going somewhere for a mean purpose and it scared the heck out of me, I turned around and went back the other way about as fast as I could go, realizing that was not a place I want to be involved. [Interviewer] How did that make you feel then and afterwards? [Grove] Well it's hard to describe, it's kind of like the first time you become aware that people can be violent to each other. It really really hit me hard, these people are really intent on beating the heck out of somebody else that they may not even know. But just the ability of one human being to express that much physical violence just, it was shocking to me, I think that might've been the first time I realized how mean and evil people can be towards one another, it was a side of human nature, of human capacity, that I had not fully realized. Even reading stories of violence in the newspaper, there's

nothing like the first time you really see it for yourself.