American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Jim Zwerg, 3 of 4

[Interviewer] --remember so much, but with the end of the riots, was it-- one thing you said was that "we will continue no matter what," I mean, was there- did you even still think, "well of course this would continue," or "what was I thinking," "this was a mistake?" [Zwerg]: Well, that again that is one of the, uh, elements of a demonsration, even in Nashville. If you were arrested sitting-in, there would-- ten kids at a lunch counter. If they're hauled all off to the paddy wagon, as soon as they;re all off, another ten kids come in and sit down. That happened in- I mean, that's just one of the basics of the demonstration, uh, philosophy if you will; was that we're gonna keep comin', we're not going away, no matter what you do. So I'm sure, I believe that, in my heart of hearts, it was a logical thing to say. Uh, and part of our planning, there were still kids from the central committee

that hadn't come down yet. And that was just Nashville. So, we figured, I mean ?inaudible? did we did we know that people would come? No. Did we anticipate it within our thinking as we were planning this? You bet. I mean Kids from Nashville went down to other locations where students had been arrested, that's where Diane was when-- I'm not-- Chapel hill, I think she was at, and went to jail for a couple months before she got out and then came back as our secretary there in Nashville. So yeah, it- it was part of the rationale and we expected it. [Interviewer]: And even I'm sure?inaudible? there was something I read too, and maybe you will remember, or not, that they were afraid of the hospital, that people that omar was coming at you [Zwerg] A nurse I had,

and I wish I remembered her name, but when I came to, apologized to me because she said "I knocked you out that first night, you were starting to come around a little, but there was a group that got within a half a block of the hospital that were coming to lynch you. And I didn't want you to know if they got here." [Interviewer] How-- what is it saying at that time about what was at stake that people would want to come to do that to you? [Zwerg] But that was common in the south. God forbid a black man look at a white woman, he's dead. Sooner or later they're going to get him, I mean the stories of my classmates that they would tell

sitting at the dinner table and the Klan comes and Uncle Henry goes and you never see Uncle Henry alive again, in fact they never find his body because he talked back to some white guy. Those stories are numerous in the '40s, '50s, and earlier. I just-- I found it incomprehensible to imagine that, living in that kind of a community or in an environment and that these young people would take it on and be willing to risk everything to bring about a better country. [Interviewer] Was it-- what did the rides accomplish? Was it to break segregation, did it show America its face?

[Zwerg] Well the original intent obviously was to have the government, federal government, enforce its laws. But I think, if I may give you another illustration, the 25th anniversary of the rides I was asked to ride back into Montgomery by another television entity. And I got on the bus in Nashville and sat right across in the front seat near across from the bus driver. The narrator was walking up and down the bus talking away about the freedom rides what we were doing, and after he'd done his piece, they wanted to put the equipment in the seat across from me right behind the bus driver. And it was a young black student, I think he told me he was 16. [Interviewer] Stop, something fell.

[Zwerg] I had never-- I went down to Florida when I was about three with my parents I think or something like that, I had no clue what segregation was like. In Nashville was nothing like Birmingham and Montgomery. [Interviewer] Let's get that. [Zwerg] The buses in Montgomery were integrated. They didn't have some of the same issues that they had further south, so in a sense in that regard, I think my introduction was a nice segue to Birmingham and Montgomery. But in meeting and talking with those kids from Alabama and Louisiana and Mississippi and Georgia and hearing the stories, you just kind of went, "it's incredible,"

it's just so hard to believe that people really treated people that way. [Interviewer] What do you think the press did, did it help, as one sense as horrible as it was, the violence, did that help the case because then Americans got to see? [Zwerg] Absolutely. [Interviewer] Can you say that in a sentence? [Zwerg] The press-- this, the media coverage was so extensive it literally went around the world and so not just the United States putting pressure on our federal government, but other governments saying "ok America you talk the talk, when are you going to start walking the walk?" So yes it had an impact. You don't-- God forbid you don't want the violence if you can negotiate-- if anybody was willing to negotiate an issue,

we would negotiate. It was only when the door was slammed in your face that you said "ok we're going to demonstrate." If the buses had integrated, if Patterson had said, "fine," things could've been very very different, but the media definitely-- and at that time, up until that time, let me see, I think the media in the south was very sympathetic to segregation, did not cover any of this type of stuff. You didn't hear about lynchings and even at the time I was growing up, television was just starting, you didn't have the internet, you didn't have instant access to the news, Saturday at the movie theater during cartoons you'd get the RKO news

update and local newspapers tended to deal with local news. I never heard about the Montgomery bus boycott when I was in high school, never hit our papers. And I think the verse-- the reversal is true in the southern papers. They weren't going to talk about what the good stuff was that was going on in integration, they didn't want that out. [Interviewer] And what about Kennedy, do you think that hitting the news forced the JFK administration to-- [Zwerg] It certainly had an effect, yes. Because again, he came in as a refreshing difference-- [Interviewer] Sorry, can you restate that and use his name and just like a complete thought, the media attention with the rise made president Kennedy-- [Zwerg] I think the media response to the press was it had an impact on both Bobby and John Kennedy

and the congress because the congressman and senators from the south had to face the music and those who were more liberal where they were from started coming out of the woodwork and saying "there's gotta be change." I think the one that probably surprised most of us the most after the fact was Lyndon Johnson. The role that he played as a southern senator really doing a swing to help bring about the laws and the changes in the laws. [Interviewer] Okay, and then something just to conclude about the thinking was to continue even after Montgomery, why continue the rides after Montgomery, and did you

want to go or did you go? [Zwerg] Well the original CORE ride was to go Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi to New Orleans. We wanted to follow that same path and when we got tickets our tickers were through to New Orleans, so we wanted to continue that. When the students were arrested in Jackson and imprisoned, again the effect and the pressure that that put on to make changes-- it didn't get them out of jail earlier but you could see the handwriting on the wall and the powers that be within the movement at that point felt to go on to New Orleans wasn't going to be that significant and in fact that was when the beginning kernel of the thought of voter registration was getting started.

I had wanted to go on, I felt initially that I had betrayed the others that I didn't go on. I really wanted to go on. I had to go back home, my dad did have a heart attack, my mother had a nervous breakdown, and our associate pastor came down, flew down to Montgomery and flew home with me. I spent two weeks calming them down before my brother drove me back down to Nashville to take my finals. And what had been originally in the works since people were coming on down and continuing the ride. We were concerned that those that were coming might not have been trained in nonviolence and so the Diane Nash-es in the leadership were trying to see,

"let's have Nashville," I think Greenville, there were like three or four spots where people were coming, we asked them to go there and go through some nonviolent training before they continued on down. Well by the time I got back down to Nashville basically three weeks had gone by. All of the central committee was in jail in Parchman, there was nobody there coming through Nashville, even to get training. And it was while I was taking my finals that I had had a lot of pain in my back. I was never told what all my injuries were, but I knew I was having tremendous discomfort in my back and in fact as my brother drove me down I was prone,

we had a little Nash Rambler where you could put the seat down, and I was in such discomfort and I made a wrong move going to one of my finals and passed out from the pain and was carried across the street to Meharry Medical College where they took x-rays and discovered that I had the three broken vertebrae. So I had been walking around on three broken vertebrae for three weeks too. But once that was discovered, there was no way I was going to be able to go on. I needed to heal. [Interviewer] And did you know, I guess backing up slightly, your face was covered in blood, did you know like your face, was it your teeth were bashed in, or did you feel just horrible pain in your face? [Zwerg] I didn't feel any pain. I'm sure it was shock. The pictures,

there were arrows showing the one where I'm with John and ?Lewell?, "picking teeth out," I didn't lose any teeth then. That was blood that had come down into my mouth and coagulated, and I was picking gobs of blood out. My teeth were basically all fractured and I, having a father who was a dentist, he saved my teeth for a number of years. I've since lost teeth, and most of them have been because those fractured lines have been impacted over the years and I have a tooth just fractured, and if they can build a crown, if not, end up with a partial. [Interviewer] Can you just briefly describe your injuries, even though you've learned about all the details later-- [Zwerg] Severe concussion,-- [Interviewer] And start from a complete sentence-- [Zwerg] As far as

I understand, my injuries were severe concussion, the three broken vertebrae, broken thumbs, broken nose, contusions, abrasions, those sorts of things. The one thing that has come over time and I can't tell you what it is, I'm assuming perhaps some adhesions, but I have a spot down here where I was told, some men held me while some women kicked me in the groin, that probably was a result of that, I don't know. [Interviewer] Did you-- and then you said the blood was just from the broken nose then, and that caused the -- [Zwerg] All over, but yeah I bled a lot through my nose. But I had

lacerations up here too. [Zwerg] I haven't asked yet, "how did you feel when they were beating you?" I don't know, I was unconscious! "How long did you lay on the tarmac?" I don't know, I was unconscious! [Interviewer] It just happened, and you just saw the result afterward. [Zwerg] Mm-hmm. But that's an interesting sidelike too, when you go back and reflect what that fellow did with the mic and with the photographer, that was very typical of the Klan, and he was Klan. You informed the press and the media, you will not take any pictures during what's happening. You can take all you want afterwards because that'll scare the heck out of anybody. But that was part of the Klan's modus operandi.

You saw the person that had been lynched, but you didn't watch the people that were stringing him up. They got one picture in Birmingham bus terminal that shows a couple of pictures of the faces of the fellas doing the beating. I don't know who took that and I don't know how he got away with it, but-- and then those people were taken to trial, whether they were found guilty I don't know, but that was one of the aspects of the media too, down there. You didn't take those pictures. [Interviewer] Like complicity. [Zwerg] Mm-hmm, in it's own way. Or fear your own life. "We're going to come get you if you do that." There's one picture from that meeting that shows a fella pulling on a fella, and he's kind of like this, as I recall. I have no idea who it was, it was taken like

from a rooftop. [Interviewer] And the point further is to show you full of blood but not you getting beaten. [Zwerg] Mm-hmm. "This was going to happen to you if you come down here." [Interviewer] So your picture was supposed to be a message. [Zwerg] Mm-hmm, absolutely. [Interviewer] Would you say that in a thought? [Zwerg] I'm sorry? [Interviewer] Could you say that in a sentence? [Zwerg] I think I'm not sure that the press that took the picture of me standing there bloody was a southern person or not, but that type of picture of a white person that had been beaten up because they participated, or a black man who was beaten or shot or killed or hung because of what he had done, was saying "see what's going to happen to you? Don't do it." [Interviewer] And

then on that note, did you raise money? Did you go throughout after to continue the ride, did you go around the country--? [Zwerg] No. I didn't, I don't know if anybody else did. [Interviewer] And the next day after there was that mass meeting at First Baptist Church, did you go? I know you went to the hospital, did you-- [Zwerg] That was that evening. [Interviewer] So what did you know that was supposed to be, that was--? [Zwerg] I was unconscious, I don't remember that. I just learned two years ago that Diane and Bernard came and visited me in the hospital. I didn't know that. [Interviewer] And did you know that there going to be a decision to continue after Montgomery, because that would be a big-- [Zwerg] Oh I knew that would happen, that wasn't open for discussion. I mean, we were going to continue the ride, wherever it took us.

Ultimately to New Orleans because I got beat up, that's a bump in the road. If I'd been physically fit I would have gone with them. [Interviewer] And talk to us, give us a brief overview of how the Nashville sit-ins that you guys were battle-tested, you tasted success, that's why you could go forth. [Zwerg] Well the ones-- the students from Nashville that were in that initial wave were all members of the central committee. These were students that had indeed been tested either the previous year during the sit-ins or that current year during the stand-ins and additional sit-ins that we had. We had been through violence, we had been arrested or whatever, we'd all faced something like that, had our lives threatened, so we were ones that had not broken and we were the logical ones to continue the ride.

And even then if you really, if you want to take the nasty side and look at the Montgomery situation, there weren't that many of us that stood and took the beating. Several ran. But the idea was to live another day to do it. You don't-- if you can avoid violence and not get beat up, I don't fault anybody that. But that-- in-made sense that we were the ones that went, you would not put somebody who'd been in one or two demonstrations into that kind of environment. [Interviewer] And you, sort of what you were saying, you didn't run, you stayed and took it. [Zwerg] I didn't have a choice to run, I was still praying when I got grabbed. [laughs] What we were trying to do

when we saw the fellas start taking on the press, obviously they had kept Reverend Abernathy and Abernathy's people from getting to the bus terminal so we didn't have cars to get people into. So the next thing was to try and get the girls into vehicles and into the community in and that's where when you talk to Catherine Burke-Brooks, you got to ask her situation with the taxi driver who wouldn't take the two white girls. [phone rings] Hello! [Interviewer] Diane ?Wunning? came to-- [Zwerg] Talk about it? [Interviewer] Diane Nash went, or Martin Luther King joined in the rides, was that made at the-- [Zwerg] I'm not the one to talk about that. [Interviewer] Okay, alright. Same intensity. What was Diane Nash like? [Zwerg] Everybody was in love with Diane Nash.

In the vernacular of the day Diane was a stone fox, Lord have mercy. She was a beautiful woman, she was so-- she was kind of the counterpart to John. I mean John was a solid rock and so is Diane, but Diane also had much-- she was very articulate and if Diane said this was going to happen, it was going to happen. One way or another Diane was going to get it done. Very committed, but-- very thorough, I mean I can't think of anybody in our group that was more fitted to being

that coordinator behind the scenes working the phones, organizing who's going to go where when and how than Diane, she was just very very credibly competent. [Interviewer] And do you think she had overcompensate or work harder to prove she was serious because of her beauty? [Zwerg] I don't know is that was even an issue in those days. Lucretia Collins was a knockout, Catherine Burke was a knockout, there were many very attractive young ladies involved but I don't think it had anything to do with anybody's looks, it was a-- it was a commitment that was something-- to something that was bigger than any or all of us. And all of us grew because of being a part of it,

I think everybody will tell you that that was some of the most, if not the most incredible time of their lives. I know I never felt so close to God, my faith was never so powerful and my emotional health, my-- you name it, I mean I got the best grades I ever got in school and you just-- when you accept nonviolence the first person to change is you because in your very soul, that very spirit with which you look at life is changed. And all, in all those positive attributes, honesty, justice, caring, loving, those take the forefront and you're not so

worried about one-ups-manship, "I gotta win." It's looking at much more of a bigger picture and realizing that you are playing a role in helping bring that about and that's-- it's an incredible privilege. I look back upon it in that regard. My life has been so blessed. [Interviewer] So what did the rides accomplish? I mean state the obvious, the first interracial, interfaith movement, but it also forced maybe the federal government to be involved, maybe it forced the nation to look at itself. [Zwerg] It started the ball rolling I think in a much more effective manner, there wasn't the

feds couldn't say "slow down, give us time," this couldn't happen. The pressure was there, people around the world saw what had happened, understood because it had been communicated from those of us on the ride or associated with nonviolence what we were working for and the whole world was saying "well why aren't, you know--"