American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Marvin Rich, 1 of 3

?[Background speaker] inaudible? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 9 10 test. [Host]: ?inaudible? Do you mind if I call you Marvin? [Guest]: What? [Host]: Do you mind if I call you Marvin? [Guest]: not in the least. [Host]: Ok, you can call me Stanley. [Guest]: How you Stanley? [Host]: Good, Marvin. [Host]: So, um, when is it ?unintelligible? the first thing I wanted to ask you about is that you are a longtime member of CORE and, and, you know, so what, what was ?unintelligible? the difference between CORE and some of the other groups that were around and we're talking about, you know in, in, in, in the early '60s, late '50s. What's the different between CORE and any other group? [Guest] Yeah, well I, uh ?unintelligible? when I went to Washington University I joined the NAACP youth chapter and the problem is it seldom met and it seldom did anything. ?unintelligible? that, um, I wasn't impressed but I had been very active in de-segregating washingt- de-segregating, ending discrimination at the university and they didn't admit blacks in those days and the

I met with people who had been active in CORE and Chicago, who moved to St. Louis and they were active in the civil rights movement and they really seemed to be active in a way that was very different and, in fact, when I joined CORE we went through the effort to end segre-, discrimination lack of service in the dime stores in New Yor-, in St. Louis and we demonstrated every day every week on Saturdays, we had a, uh meeting of the [Host]: ?unintelligible? [Guest]: membership every week. [Host]: we should stop, sorry we're getting [Engineer]: ?unintelligible? [Engineer]: We have, uh, phones off? [Host]: we're getting police, uh [Guest]: What? [Host]: We're getting police

sirens, and so [Guest]: Oh, okay. [2nd Engineer]: ?unintelligible? Is your phone off? [Guest]: No, I don't hav-, didn't bring a phone. [Engineer]: Okay. [Host]:That's it. For general terms you know what was the perception of the difference between CORE, I mean because, you know, at that time, you know, so, so we're looking 40, almost 50 years down the road, ?unintelligible? years down the road, you know even more, even more for you, but really I'm [Guest]: 50, 1946 to 50, 50 [Host]: talking about at this point, not when you joined [Guest]: Oh, okay [Host]: I'm talking about on the, on, on on the eve of the, uh, of the freedom rides? [Guest]: Yeah [Host]: So you have, you know, at that point the SCLC is just forming but you have the Urban League, you have NAACP, you have all those groups, [Guest]: Yeah [Host]: and, and now, you know, 50 years later, almost, people don't, a lot of people weren't even born, obviously, [Guest]: Yeah [Host]: but a lot of people don't remember, what was the ?unintelligible? so CORE was thought of as what? what was ?this new CORE? and the other groups? [Guest]: Well f-, there were two main differences, one: CORE believed in non-violent

direct action and the two went together, philosophically and they also were very active. When they did something they didn't write a letter, it wasn't a court case, um they met weekly and they demonstrated weekly, sometimes more often, um now the Urban League had no members per se, they had offices in various cities but there was no role for membership, now NAACP did have membership and, in some cases, uh, CORE was very act-, they, they cooperated very well in the beginning of the sit-ins in 1960, Doctor George Si- Simkins, in Greensboro, North Carolina was asked by the demonstrators

to get help. He had just read a pamphlet called "Cracking the Color Line" put out by CORE. He called in CORE and we sent two staff members down to North Carolina um, but that's cooperation, he had the feeling that we knew something about what these guys were doing and he didn't feel that the NAA, uh, was be active in that thing, but he cooperated and they and then frequently that happened in cities [Host]: Let me, let me ?unintelligible? [Guest]: Yeah, yeah [Engineer]: Should I go tighter? [Host]: yeah, yeah ?unintelligible? yeah [Engineer]: Little bit, right? Okay [Host]: Um ok, so you mentioned, uh, one of one of the beliefs of, ?unintelligible? CORE believed in non-violent, direct action what was that? what is nonviolent direct action, what does that mean?

[Guest]: Well, sit-ins mean that [Host]: No, no I'm not asking about ?unintelligible? [Guest]: No, no oh ok. [Host]: I'm asking about, about what, ya know, what CORE believed, I think so you could start out with mentioning CORE, but what is non-violent, direct action? [Guest]: Non-violent, direct action means taking action and that is involvement you know, in a certain sense writing a letter is taking action on the other hand, it doesn't, people can put letters aside very quickly. We believed in taking actions that people couldn't put aside. We would, after finding that a restaurant, for example, discriminated and would not admit negroes. Then we would send interracial groups to sit in, they would not leave, um sometimes, I remember it happened to me, the man behind the

counter sharpened his knife in front of my nose for at least 30 minutes, he was saying something to me and I was saying something to him, we were saying something to him. We were saying, in spite of what you're doing we will respect you, but we will continue to work to fight until this ends. Until discrimination is gone, in this situation, um that's, in a nutshell what it is, um, and we did training of our own members and, bef-, at the beginning, uh people weren't admitted unless they had finished certain amount of training and could meet with the members of the CORE group and demonstrate that their commitment and their understanding of non-violent, direct action.

[Host]: So at, at, at that point, and so again,well we're kind of in 1960, '61 [Guest]: Yeah [Host]: so of, of, of, of, of the civil rights ?groups? thing, with its its belief in, in, in non-violent, direct action, would CORE be one of the more radical of the groups that ?unintelligible? [Guest]: Well, certainly everyone felt that way and [Host]: I'm saying ?unintelligible? kind of say what everyone felt, like ?unintelligible? [Guest]: They felt oh everyone felt that the CORE and SNCC were the two radical groups and the Urban League was certainly respected, people liked what they did, but they, they were not not a player essentially in this, um the NAA had chapters all over the country, uh, they were not committed to non-violent, direct action in a certain sense their main thrust, uh, was legal action, now they did other things, uh

they had, because they had big membership, uh, they were able to speak with some res-, they they were entitled to speak and they'd be respected, uh, by others in the community and by others in the wider community, but, uh, CORE, SNCC, and NAA were the ones which involved people, uh, all across the country, um now CORE tended to get the more radical people, uh, it was also interracial uh, that was the belief, that was the commitment of its members and its officers, um and that showed up in the actions of everywhere. [Host]: Mm hmm. One of the things that, that, that I was reading

yesterday, um, um, someone said that, um that one of the things that, that some of these, um non-violent, direct action, um, one of the things it had had to do was to show, to the general public, that, that segregation was not, um maintained by this kind of genteel agreement between blacks and whites, that part of what you all did was to, to make it clear that this wasn't that kind of genteel agreement that, the, especially, the south wanted to say it was. [Guest]: Yeah, uh, yes CORE was committed to action, for instance, in St. Louis, uh, when the sw- the swimming pools were de-segregated by

the order of the mayor, there were riots and because of that, people didn't go CORE sent people to swim in the public swimming pools, I was one of them and it's interesting 'cause I go in and swim and the lifeguard would spit at me and I didn't mind that, and I didn't mind the picket thing outside so much, but I was scared to death because I'm a lousy swimmer and I had visions of somebody grabbing my arm and ?unintelligible? I wouldn't come back, that took more out of me emotionally than going through the demonstrations with "stay back nigger" s-, big postage si-, posters and stuff like that they carried, um St. Louis was very, Gerald L.

K. Smith, I don't know if you remember him, but he was a very nasty, white, um segregationist, uh, in the, um '50s and '60s and, um we were there. [Host]: Mm hmm. I want to move on to, um, the freedom rides, okay? We can talk about that for a little ?for a few minutes, ourselves? [Guest]: Sure [Host]: Um, do you remember, do you remember how, h- whose idea the fr-, the freedom rides were? how did, how did, how did you first hear about the idea of the freedom rides? [Guest]: Okay, well, the, there're two different things about the freedom rides the first freedom ride was 1947, it was called the Journey of Reconciliation, it had on, it went, it went, into the upper south it didn't go as far as, well, uh North Carolina, that uh,

it certainly didn't go to Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi uh, it was an interracial group sponsored by CORE, uh it was called the Journey of Reconciliation, um some of the people were ultimately arrested and, uh, Bayard Rustin, who was in, uh, who later became an assistant to Martin Luther King, um was sentenced to 30 days in the chain gang in North Carolina and he, uh wrote a memorandum, which I read and influenced me and it influenced a lot of other people, it's like a 15 page type-written statement about what happened in that jail, um, now the, that was the first freedom ride and then there wasn't

another one, and that was the result, and that was after the Irene Morgan case which said that the segregation on interstate transportation was illegal, uh, but that didn't change anything with the signs weren't taken down, um, and the, so that they, the freedom ride, the Journey of Reconciliation was designed to publicize what the supreme court had done and to get people in their own communities to take action against it. Well, it did some good and some, uh, mid states, border states, ?unintelligible? in St. Louis which is in Missouri, which is as far north as the border states went, uh, didn't change anything, um

but in the '60s after, right after the, um, sit-ins in Geensboro, North Carolina, two f- CORE field secretaries were coming back to New York, which was our headquarters, and that was Tom Gaither and Gordon Carey, uh, Tom Gaither is black, he, uh was active in the sit-ins in Rock Hill South Carolina, uh, Gordon Carey is, uh, white, uh he had been active in Pasadena CORE and his father was a minister. Um, they were coming back and they, uh, started talking, because they took the bus and the buses were segregated and they said this is time, and there was the Boynton case, which had just come from the supreme court, which

reinforced Morgan, and said specifically, that restaurants associated with the interstate commerce, um, so Gaither and, um, Gordon Carey reported to the National Action Council, which is CORE's executive committee, really, and um, they didn't know Jim Farmer had just been selected to be our executive director and he was supportive of this, but he didn't know whether it would win support in the executive committee, the action council, it did, um people were excited to do it and, uh, this meeting was in March and from then we started organizing, um, we publicized that it was going to be happen, we got certain CORE members, but we also got people who

had been, uh, active in SNCC, uh, Student Non-violent Committee Coordinating council and, um, one of those was John Lewis, who subsequently was elected to congress and is still a member of congress and has done wonderful work, uh, but he was a student at a theological school in, uh, Nashville and um, Jim Lawson, who was a faculty member, um, one of the Nashville schools, I'm not sure which one right now, um had been preaching nonviolence to the kids there and if they were active in the, they, and not a number of them were willing to, to go and then we had just others that picked up, uh, uh, Ed Blankenheim came from

Arizona [Host]: Let me, um, let me inter- interrupt because that's kind of much more detail [Guest]: Yeah [Host]: ?unintelligible? again, we're trying to be concise here so, um, talk about how, you know, you mentioned that ?unintelligible? you come up with this idea of, of, of doing the freedom rides, um, how did you publicize the freedom rides? [Guest]: We notified, um, sent out stuff to our own chapters, we sent some material to the black press, uh, we also notified the, um, and tried to, said that we were anxious to get volunteers from SNCC and we did that, later on we talk in advance to people like Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young but that was personal, it wasn't to get their organization committed, 'cause they didn't approve of it. [Host]: What do you mean they didn't approve of it, what did they think about it? [Guest]: Well, they thought that, uh, ta- going into the south

in significant numbers was, uh, more likely to create physical injury than anything else and didn't feel we would succeed in desegregating, uh, the buses and the bus terminals, and uh, they liked us but they didn't think we were doing the right thing. [Host]: Mmm hmm. Marvin, I'm gonna ask you that again and if you could give me, 'cause you said that "they" didn't like it, and, and, and I wanna know want to know how "they" were, but maybe not the names of the people put the names of the organizations [Guest]: Yeah, okay [Host]: Okay? so, um, what did the other organizations think about what you do? [Guest]: The NAACP, uh, which is, has people all over the area. The NAACP felt that this was likely to create physical injury to the participants and unlikely to change the discrimination in the

lunch counters and in the buses. [Host]: So they didn't want to participate? [Guest]: They did not want to participate. [Host]: Okay, ?unintelligible? um who's idea was, was the name freedom rides, do you remember how that came about? [Guest]: Uh, it was came out of the National Action Council meeting in March of 1961, where CORE, uh, said it was going to do this and the title that they gave it was Freedom Ride 1961 obviously, only the freedom ride lived on. [Host]: Mm hmm, mm hmm. Um, if you explain to me just to make clear, ya know, why then? Um, and, and it seems that one of the things that, that a lot of people don't talk about, is, is it the Boynton case that [Guest]: Yes [Host]:Just, just real quick ?unintelligible? that

that, that, that there was this case in, in 1960, I believe, right? [Guest]: Yeah [Host]: Um, and that's what was ?unintelligible? So, how did the, how did the Boynton case help the freedom rides? [Guest]: Well, the Boynton case said that the restaurants in the terminals were part of interstate commerce and therefore the discrimination was unconstitutional. They said that, but that didn't mean it was going to be honored, and we knew that we had to play a role in doing that and we felt that if we did this freedom ride other people would be excited by it and they would change things in their own community. [Host]: Can we cut for a second? [Engineer]: Sure [Host]: How ?bad? was that? [Engineer]: It's rolling [Host]: So how did the Boynton case, what was it and how did it lead to the freedom rides? [Guest]: Okay, the Boynton case was, uh, decided by the supreme court in 1960 and it said, uh,

that discrimination in service at lunch counters in bus terminals was unconstitutional. It was a violation of the interstate commerce rights. [Host]: Mm hmm. And that kind of built on, on the Morgan case, right? [Guest]: Yes, the Morgan case was the first case, and that said basically that ?unintelligible? the, said that s-,the actual travel in buses had to be on an integrated basis and it could not be blacks in the rear and whites in the fronts, it has to be come one, come all. [Host]: Mm hmm. Just talk, uh, a little bit about the, the fact, I think the what, sometimes people don't understand is, is that, that in, in some ways, you know what you guys were doing, in a nutshell, in some ways, um, was

that, you know, these laws would get passed, right? and nothing would change. [Guest]: Yeah, yeah. [Host]: So ya know because, ya know people now don't understand that, you know that, that, you know what I mean w- well, they think the law's passed so they gotta obey it. [Guest]: Yeah, yeah, okay. Um, when the Boynton and previously the Morgan came out, case was settled by the supreme court nothing changed, and it was cor-, because people didn't want to change, nobody took the initiative and uh, to make change possible, therefore CORE decided to move in, we said this was wrong, it's illegal it's immoral, we are going to take a stand and we, demon-, want to demonstrate to people across the country, uh, but these, that these constitutional decisions have been

made by the supreme court and we want people to start speaking up so that other people will recognize the importance of making change. [Host]: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Let's cut for a second? [Engineer]: Okay [Host]: [coughs] Um, y-, you mentioned kind of that by the way that, that, that when you advertised and tried, and recruited people for the rides that, you know, you mentioned that, that there might be some, little bit of danger, um, what what di-, what did you all think was going to happen? [Guest]: We had no idea th-, in '47 uh, some people were arrested and put in jail, uh we thought that was likely, uh, but there might be picketing, who knows, we didn't know, but we knew that, um this would not be taken, this change would not be made easily, uh, we certainly didn't

anticipate burning buses, um, and we certainly didn't anticipate massive unrest. [Host]: Okay, let's cut. [Engineer]: Okay [Host]: I think the question was, kind of, what what did you think was going to happen? If you could answer it this time, um, try to put yourself back in [Guest]: Yeah [Host]: in, in March, or whenever it was that ?the rest of? you were planning this thing of 1961, but not I don't want you to s- jump ahead and talk about the burning bus and the other thing [Guest]: Oh, okay [Host]: I want you to stay back in pre-May [Guest]: Okay [Host]: pre-May, 1961 the question is as, okay so you're planning these rides, you guys de-, I'm sorry, you decide to go on these rides, um you know, you say let's do these rides, ?unintelligible? the NAACP and other people are saying, you know, you all are crazy [2nd Engineer]: That's okay [Host]: to do these rides, um, what did, what did what did CORE think was gonna happen? What did you, personally, think was gonna happen? [Guest]: I didn't

know. Oh, I'm, I assumed that there'd be some arrests, I assumed there'd, you know, there might be somebody hitting somebody, uh, be-, those were things were happening all the time. Uh, ?unintelligible? some similar things, uh we didn't know, didn't think that they would be massive, but we certainly, well, arrests were ?unintelligible? anticipated. [Host]: Mm hmm. Um, in some ways, um what you all wanted, talk about that, becau-, what, what, you want is, in some ways, arrests and you want some, you want action, you want you wa-, you're, you're y- y-, you're [Guest]: We wanted publicity because we realized that most people didn't know anything about these supreme court decisions, they were in the paper

but, th- that nobody knew them and they faded from the paper very quickly and what we were trying to do was to get people to think about this decision and think about how they can play a role in implementing it. [Host]: Mm hmm. I think the other thing that, that people didn't know about was the south [Guest]: Yes, I think that's true, uh, listen, uh, we in CORE were, tended to be on the fringes of the south and Florida and Kentucky and Virginia, we didn't have any real chapters in Georgia and Alabama or Mississippi at that time we had some contacts in North Carolina and Virginia, but those, yeah. [Host]: And what's

the difference? [Guest]: Well, in uh, we felt that the people in the deep south faced a more difficult situation, they were afraid for s-, bodily injury maybe their lives, um, and were not willing, in the same way, to get involved. They feared, and with good reason.