A Second Look; 101; Marshall, Texas; Marshall, Texas

A second look with Bill Moyer is made possible by a grant from the Schumann Foundation. A second look with Bill Moyer is made possible by a grant from the Schumann Foundation. I'm Bill Moyers, a journalist I admire once wrote a book called, Tell the Truth and Run. We journalists try our best with the truth, but there's no doubt we do run a lot, own to the next report and the next and the next.

In my 18 years as a broadcast journalist I've covered a lot of stories whose middles and endings I never saw. Early in the Reagan administration I talked to some people who had been hurt by the deep budget cuts and programs for the poor. I've been wondering since if those people are still hurting. Back in 1976 I set out for the wide open spaces, a far corner of Colorado, where a few cowboys were still living the rugged life of the Old West and wondering whether they were the last of their breed. I've been wondering too. And over the years I've been privileged to talk with some wise men and women about ourselves and our times. I've often speculated about what new meanings their words might have for the times it followed and for the selves we became. So I've welcomed this chance to take a second look at some people, places and stories from the past. Over the next few months we'll be seeing broadcast that originally aired on Bill Moria's journal, Creativity, CBS Reports, A Walk Through the 20th Century in search of the Constitution and God in Politics. To start us off we're returning to one little place that's already done a lot of changing to catch up with this century, Marshall Texas.

In 1984 I went there to see what I could still find of the small town heart and soul of my childhood. Join me as we take a second look at Marshall Texas, Marshall Texas. I've often thought that I was looking back when through a rose colored place. But for good luck when I was little I kept a sort of a diary a part of it. And I look back at that diary and it's the writing's not too good. But it says just what I'm saying now. In those days. In those days. It was good. I knew it was good. What were your recollections of the Depression? You were both... Well this is so. The Depression had no adverse influence upon our lives. Our father had worked.

Were we teaching in a way? We were teaching. The pattern of our life was left untouched. Marshall was always proud of himself being a close knit community where you know people were your own can. It means middle class white. And you don't want people coming in telling you how to run your business. When they sat in at the Woolworth store, some of the young uninformed young whites, bless their hearts, are stuck lighted cigarettes. Or through lighted matches at them. And the black youngsters would turn to them and say, I love you. Now current black students are not learning much about their past. Don't know what happened in the 60s. Somehow we've got to get it back because you cannot know where you're going until you know where you've come from. So many of us live in cities today. We often forget that early in the century America was a nation of small towns. The country town was the place where people met, gossiped, bought, sold, and learned.

What happened there shaped public sentiment and gave a character all its own to American culture. So to look at a small town is to open a big chapter of American history. The town we're going to visit is in the northeast corner of Texas, not far from where Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana joined the Lone Star State. It was settled in 1839 by the time Texas seceded from the Union in 1861. It was one of the biggest and wealthiest towns in the state. But then as sometime happens, places like Dallas and Houston passed it by. So it's been content all these years with a population numbering between 20 and 25,000. There's no special reason we chose it except for one thing. It's my hometown. Now it could have been your hometown. I'm sure you'll hear echoes of the people you grew up with. Feel some of the emotions come into small town experience and possibly recollect the influences that shaped your own life as mine was shaped in Marshall, Texas.

Marshall, Texas, it gave me that small town soul which one writer long ago said, makes a man want to know small, unimportant things about the people who go past on swift journeys. Marshall, Texas, honors one of its citizens. Max Lane. I knew Max when we worked together for the local paper, the Marshall News Messenger. He's done a lot of good work for the town, one of those people who stay in a place like this and make a difference, but whose fame spreads no further. I left Marshall 30 years ago for college and other places far away.

Every time I come back to see my parents, I'm struck at how the place has changed. This used to be the heart of it, the town square with a bustling courthouse surrounded by small shops. Life's about the same here today as in any town its size. Folks come and go in the sheltered intimacy of the little worlds we all make for ourselves no matter where we live. Nowadays, not as many people come downtown. The Paramount Theatre has seen its last picture show. The Lynn Theatre doesn't even exist anymore. There's no hotel or restaurant on Mainstreet to bring folks here. Some shops hang on hoping for a renaissance, but Bell Brothers is gone, the Denver Company, Sam Whitener's coffee shop. All the shops are gone that used to be on this side of the square. Now there's just this drive-in bank. Jesse Carter and Old Man Key would be spinning in their graves

if they knew you could cash your weekly paycheck from the front seat of your car. When they were running the banks, you could hardly change a dollar bill for four quarters without their endorsement. This was all wood or open space, meadows. Now it's shopping centers. When the first shopping center came to the outskirts of Marshall, the heart of the city, its downtown area, the square, which had been its life for a hundred years, began slowly to ebb away. Right here used to be a tiny grill, where for 25 cents you could get the best hamburger in America. It's run by Mr. Pokinghorn. Only six people could get in there at once. Six people. Now there's McDonald's, Bonanza, Burger King. Who cares it, you know, as the sign there says, 40 billion McDonald's sold. They were sold in Marshall. Some things don't change.

The passions are Friday night football. The Pep rallies, bonfires, great expectations of glory and conquest. It was bigger than Christmas. I was part of it. During the games, I was a cheerleader. Right before half time, I dashed under the stands to trade my pep squad silks for the uniform of the marching band. And I'd blow like Gabriel on the trumpet my parents had saved for months to help me buy for $35. We usually lost to our archrivals, the Longview Lobos. That hasn't changed. Sundays are still much the same as they always were. My father says there are more baptists around here than people.

Of course, God has other children too. It takes all kinds, and we have them here. Methodists worshiped in a church built by slaves. It was started in 1839 with hand-molded bricks and hand-hewn beams and a gallery in the balcony for the slaves. The piety could stifle a teenager's fancy, and it didn't always leave much room for new ideas to spring forth in town. But the old story assigned a plot to the universe and told us our role in it. If a lot of us are between stories these days, the old story still means something here. I've got a string that none of y'all can break. What do y'all think about that? Oh, all right, walk out with that one. Back up. All right, everybody get it on.

Now, can you break it? No way can break. All right, now sit down, sit down, wait a minute now. If we're holding on to God, and if we're loving God, and if we're letting him make us strong, then nothing in this world can ever break us. You all hold on to God. No, I can't break it. I can't. Just like nobody can break God's love for us. God is our end for the ego. Well, then we thank you for the opportunity to come together here tonight to meet and carry on our city's business. Even politics here begins with a prayer. The city council is where people confront local government face to face on the issues that really matter. There's zoning, sewage, and taxes. There's a new industry in town since I was here, a lignite plant. But the old faithful is still around, timber from the piney woods by the yard.

And some people practice an ancient craft. And they will tell you here that a third of the flora pots, manufactured in America, come from Marshall. Marshall is a town where rich and poor still live, not very far from each other. And we even have suburbs. There weren't any when I was growing up. Now you find them scattered all through these pines. Owned down the road where folks used to plant cotton and grow vegetables, they raised cattle. And you remember this around here. Cows have the right to wait on a road like this. An auction is still almost as much fun as scaring your old maid aunt with a rubber snake. I don't remember the name of the kid we dared to blindfold a heifer in her pen at the East Texas State Fair one year. But he lost.

This is a Texas town. Look at the faces. You see it on the street signs as well. Texas heroes share equal billing with the nation's founders. This is where I grew up on the street name for the father of Texas, Stephen F. Austin. The elementary school I went to down there was named for Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas. Sam Houston came to Marshall once to make a speech. The old oak tree is still there, duly noted as a kind of, well for some of us, a kind of shrine. When I walked to town, I crossed Alamo Boulevard and came back on Bowie or Crockett Street. Now I'm sure you remember that Jim Bowie had to borrow money to make it to the Alamo in time to die by the side of Davey Crockett. This was a Texas town.

But it was also a southern town. I remember the night air filled with tall tales and the fragrance of Bagnolia blossoms. A town's past and place make it different from every other town, no matter how much they all may seem alike. And we're really not that far from our past. The town you see in Marshall today is a new town perched on the memories of one that's gone. For a boy growing up beside these railroad tracks, Marshall was the crossroads of the world. I still remember the Sunday my mother and I came down to Wave to my uncle who was passing through on one of the countless troop trains that rolled through Marshall all during the war, shuddling boys hardly old enough to shave to places they never heard of, places like Normandy and Sicily and Iwo Jume. For most of this century, the Texas and Pacific Railroad was Marshall's principal industry, the shops hummed with activity, repairing old cars and building new ones. Then the humming stopped.

Except for these freight trains that are still doing some work here, this is a ghost yard now. There are good many opinions on what happened. Of course, the general decline of railroad transport was the main feature. Hubert Kees family started banking here way back in the last century. There was a time when they made the entire payroll for the Texas and Pacific Railroad with silver dollars because people didn't trust paper money. Hubert Kees lived all his life in Marshall. Nevertheless, they moved the major part of the operation to Fort Worth. And they began to phase this yard down gradually. Well, the boy in the fort is just the key I used to come down here to imagine. Where were these trains going? I tried to see the cities. Oh yeah, I wish they were destined. I know what you mean. And we all wanted to go, you know. That was the thing. They'd be the down train from St. Louis would have a division that would go on from here to New Orleans. Another sleeper would, our couple of them would cut out and go to Houston.

And the rest of them would go on to the Hell Paso and so on. Dallas, Fort Worth, they always said Fort Worth. Hell Paso, Los Angeles, you know all those places we dreamed of going. Of course, it was against the rules of the railroad to take the boy and the cab and let him ride in the engine. But I had some friends. Every boy had a friend down there. You'd come out while they were putting water in the tender and kind of sneak the board and your friend wouldn't run you off. The next thing you knew there you were, riding in the cab and engine, which was every boy's ambition. Everybody wanted it. But once you'd been in the cab of an engine, especially a passenger train, they called those the varnishes because they were varnished coaches, you know. And you were riding in an engine that was pulling the varnish.

And right then from there on the rest of your life was down here. And everything. You know, this isn't as easy as it looks. No, it's not. I got a few years on you and I'm having trouble. No. This was a good place to grow up, wasn't it? Oh, it was the best in the world, I thought. This railroad here, of course, was beginning an adventure for all of them. This is sort of a tomb, a sawyer's sort of a place. We didn't envy Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, their mighty Mississippi. We had Cato Lake.

32,000 acres of winding boughs, teeming with moss and old memories. Legend says it was formed in the dark of the moon by shaking Earth spirits angry with the chief of the Cato tribe. Some folks claim it was just a plain old earthquake. Maybe. This was the destination for paddle wheelers coming up to Texas from New Orleans, chugging into the Big Sopper's Bough with settlers, merchants, and fortune-hutters. 60 people died in 1869 when the steamboat Mitty Stevens burned their Swanson's landing. We used to cap down here as kids, and we could hear their ghosts gliding through the lily pads, moaning in the morning mists, while the bullfrogs croaked in escort. If you hang around here long enough, you hear all the old stories, or start making up your own. Most of them begin.

Listen now, I've got a good one for you. There was this old boy. We called it Paul's Lake, so when he died, I figured it belonged to me. And it might. There's been some wonder about who owns Cato Lake. There's been a person of two accused me of owning it, and I guess I have as much more claim on it as anybody. White mowers almost as old as the century. There's not much he can't tell you about Cato Lake. He's been poking through these mossy waterways so long, he's alleging himself. There's not a fish in these parts that he hasn't caught twice, or a ghost he doesn't know by his first name, or a tail he's left untold. Born in year one of this century, you spent your whole life in these boughs among these superstars. Well up till now, I'm not through yet. I'm waiting for Halle's comment, and then I hear Taylor saw it coming the other day, just a billion miles away. Well, you've got some time there. Wait for that. I promise my grandchildren that I'm going to show them Halle's comment. I saw it when it passed before.

Yeah, I don't many people get to see it go by twice. You've lived through the whole century. How do you count for it? Well back when I was younger, I noticed people had died home in the bed. They didn't have hospitals in much of those days. They died in home in the bed. So I stayed away from home and out of the bed just much as possible. Then on up in the years, when I began to get ready to retire, I got to read an actuar as the insurance company, and you died 67 after you retire. Well, I watched that year when I was 67, and I was real careful all that year, and after I was over, I went to getting reckless again. Catch fish better last winter than you could this summer. How come? I don't know. They changed their habits. I used to use the system to make a jump in the boat. I caught my first fish in Kettle Lake when I was about 89 years old, and that's the only fish I've ever really cared about. But more important to me than the fish was the fact that these cypress trees represented

a thousand different characters, ghosts, phantoms, creatures, giants. It does something to the imagination down here. Well, it's kind of rare, especially on the Moonlight night. There's almost any kind of wildlife around here, fish life, and other wildlife, mostly in the count of armor. There's good men and deer, possum coons, and it's got to be a lot of beavers here lately. We didn't have beavers. Any alligators and alligators about? Yes, I see one every year or so, and I could see more if I try. You can see them at night. The big lake gets rough with waves and water, and you can't be only in a small boat. I have been in two drownings, where some of us drowned and some of us didn't. And you get out? Well, I stayed on a stump eight hours once from mid-date or just about dark.

Well, in these 81 years you've lived here. We've had world wars, nuclear bombs, cold wars, civil rights rights, and changes in America. Things haven't changed too much down here. People haven't changed. Same people are same people. There's two kinds of people on earth. The parasites and the producers. You were always a producer. Until the last two or three years, the government's just about made a parasite out of it. What? It was no man who used to cultivate beginning the junior year in high school alone, because he made this peculiar white stuff as clear as this glass of water called moonshine. And one of his outlets, when I was a junior in high school, was... He'll go to one of my high school classmates in the loop. And one night a friend and I bought a pint of moonshine and the guy sold it to us. I really get the full impact of this stuff. You should go cut it with a dairy queen milkshake.

And we nodded and bought a couple of dairy queen milkshakes. We went out to scout lake and mixed up with a dairy queen milkshake moonshine cocktail. And about an hour later, I wish Jesus would have come and taken me home. We laid on the ground and just rolled around and hollered and wailed. And I've never been able to drink moonshine since. This quite a moonshine industry here. I somehow became implicated in it for about 20 years. So what? Well, I lived down on the lower part of the lake and had me kind of a domain of my own down there. The main headquarters was round uncertain. But I wasn't in the union. I was kind of independent like. And when they called all of them nearly, I was the only one that got left out. They slided me. I went to Jefferson once and watched about 15 of them being marched off to the federal correctional school. I felt awful long for three or four months. But they all got back and started again.

Lonesome, but not regretful. No. I know they had a constable here that had done things. Well, we didn't want a constable done anything. So I was prevailed upon putting name on ticket and was over whom elected. And I stayed constable almost all the time. Finally, I resigned. But while I was constable, I was accused of being constable in one of the most respected moonshineers in the area all at the same time. We would give the sheriff fish to kind of keep him sued all we'd give the game warden whiskey. It wasn't we didn't feel as ethical to give the sheriff whiskey in the game warden fish. He used to run the liquor control board crazier. Here he goes. He knew that lake. And they couldn't find him. And LCBE didn't tell me one time. They chased him in for 45 miles and never leave a mild area of the lake. And they could tell you that white was just out of the ability to disappear or become a blue heron and flower wolf. The rumor was that he drank a ton of his own home made stuff and became invisible.

Do you ever yearn for the good old days? Well, I think about them some. And I enjoyed them while I was there and young and able to stand them. I don't think I can stand the good old days now. I was 38 years old before I lived where there's electric power. Weech off wood and burnt wood and caught warms and eat them and caught fish and eat them and kind of lived off the land. And other people weren't that fortunate in towns and places, I guess. But the good old days may have toughened me up to make me last to where I am now or even longer. I hope. I'm waiting for Halle's comment and then I'll set another goal. You didn't have to read about characters like Whitemore in a book. They were part of your everyday experience here. So were older people who might otherwise have been remote figures of authority. Even as a kid you could have an easy and natural relationship with them.

My first grade teacher lived just down the block from me. Mary Simpson, I remember from the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper until she died a few years ago. And Miss Collins, my third grade teacher lived just behind her. And a block over lived Bello Wyatt, the principal of the elementary school I attended. In class they commanded the heights and you knew your place below. But on Saturdays they were just plain folks, your neighbors. This Simpson would be raking the leaves on a Saturday morning and she'd stopped to speculate with you about why the mocking birds were so noisy this morning or she'd ask about your brother who was in the Navy. You weren't just a kid fumbling in the multiplication tables for the right answer. You were somebody. By the world's reckoning your father might be just an ordinary man as my father was. But he was somebody too. Everybody knew who he was and everybody knew whose boy you were. Nathan Goldberg had a shop right here and one Saturday afternoon when I was about 12 years old,

I was walking home, twirling through the air one of those round pieces of cardboard that come out of a hat box. Well the wind caught it and sailed it right into Nathan Goldberg's neon sign. And that sign shattered all over the sidewalk. Just a Goldberg came out. I'd never been in his shop before. But he said, Billy Don, your father's going to have to make good on that sign. Now Mr. Goldberg could have called the police. He could have grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. He could have cursed me. But he didn't. He called my father because he knew my father. That familiarity was the best kind of safety net a kid could have. Oh yes, my father made good on that sign. It cost him one-fourth his weekly paycheck. Every small town has its favorite meeting ground. This was ours. Still is. Neely's brown pig barbecue. The Neely started making what is undoubtedly the world's best barbecue sandwich back in the 20s. Keep going even when all five of the Neely boys were drafted during World War II.

That's the family in the early days. Young James Neely is standing in front of the goat. So good to see you Mr. Boyer. And you damn here. James and his wife Francis run the place now. They still use the same ingredients as ever. A soft bun, plenty of pork, shredded lettuce, and a sauce that remains a closely guarded family secret. Pork lovers from as far away as Niagara Falls, New York, will drive back here just to save her a brown pig. Probably your Saturday night in Washington. Do you miss an appointment with somebody with one of your friends? You could just drive around here. You'd find them. So everybody get this place one time or another. But I think it kept us a lot out of trouble. We use this as a hangout. This is really the club. I mean, this is the me as better than the Metropolitan Club in Washington. I never been there, but I think it's better. Can you tell us anything else? What were the good things about glory up in Marshall? A sensible logging. When you walk down the street, you know who you were. And also, the sense you could have good friends.

I'll come back here now and I can pick up conversations with people I hadn't seen in 20 years, as if it was only yesterday. Well, Joe Golden, when I knew him in high school, he was called JC. He left Marshall to become a big city reporter and successful writer. The author of a dozen books and lives now in Washington, D.C. For years, Joe's father and the only bookstore in town. His mother still lives here. The TNP Roads going north had two minor violets there. During the war years, we'd play gorilla home there. We'd have a TNP train combined. We would be rushing to gorillas, we'd ambush it, and steer the hell out of the break. I don't know what these little kids are doing, throwing grenades. Put your tomato cans full with mud at them. I guess they thought it was just cheap mentalism, but we were stopping the Nazi army. You said that you had a sense of belonging when you walked down the street. What do you mean? You could walk six blocks and you'd have 30 people speak to you, the people in the stores. Those days, the men who were the merchants would a lot of time stand in front of the store like in the afternoon. And you know Mr. Bradbury, Mr. Granger, Mr. Hanson, Mr. Powers. And they would say all over to you, rub the back of your head or something.

You'd run into a minute of coke, you'd run into Joe Hirsch. Exactly, Maxwell. It was a very comforting thing because the people around were your own folk. Linda used to say that they knew when you were sick and cared when you died. I still felt a very keenly my father died in 1972, in hospital over at St. Ford, 40 miles away. And by the time I got to the house, an hour later, this house was full of covered dishes, pies, fruits, that neighbors and church people had brought in. It's customary in the south when somebody dies where everybody chip in and have the family because they know they're going to have a lot of out of town company. We had enough food in the house to feed half of Marshall. What was the other side of going up here? What was the price of growing up in the fall of town? Filling frustrated that you were locked into a certain role here. I knew that the highway went east, the highway went west, and there's not much happened on this particular spot that was Marshall. That you were born into a certain role in this town. And unfortunately, there was a little upward mobility in those days.

The banks were run by the same families. There was one employer, the TNV Railroad. There was one newspaper who published or had a son who was essentially my age. I knew there was no future there. And the best job offered locally, I ever had, that was stock manager of the local Piglet Wiggly store, a change grocery. And one night at 11 o'clock, I was doing inventory, no overtime. I was working 70 hours a week for $30,000. And the manager said, don't go to the University of Texas. You're going to be out of place there. If you'll stay with Piglet Wiggly, we'll make you produce manager in the Henderson Texas store. At 35, $37.50 a week, you could give me $250 raise. I looked at GB Cannon, who was maybe 50 years old with a broken back and broken arches and tired and worn out. I didn't want to be like that 30 years down the road. So as fast as I got it, I could get out of here. I ran to the University of Texas at full speed. What gave you the idea you could get out? Books. My father was a reader. He was a very introverted man. He had few friends. He knew very few people well on this town, but he read a lot.

And I was exposed to books at a very early age. He told me to read for instance, and I was three years old. And I went through the Marshall Public Library. I went through that thing by the time I was in the finish of the third grade. The Lord I was lost. And nothing else to read. And those days, you didn't have the cheap paper bags, and I didn't have any money anyway. And through, look, I discovered something that I think a few in our generation knew about. The Carnegie Library out of Wiley College. The Black College. And I found out about it and went out and introduced myself to the woman who ran it. And she said, you know, white people just don't use this library. I said, well, I really like to get your books and look at them. She said, okay, just do me a favor, though. I don't want to get into trouble with the white books in this town. Would you mind coming in around the back to the basement? And occasionally, I couldn't find out what I was doing. See where the books were marked, Wiley College Library. I said, boy, what you doing reading those nigger books? I said, oh, they're interesting. But I saw the books as a way out. I reached to read a lot of adventure stories. And then I fell into books about journalism. And I had the idea that to be a city reporter for the Dallas Morning News

and to cover such exciting things as Dallas politics, God, that would be wonderful. But this world, I'd never known about this. It was for books. And for Bella White. And for Bella White. And for my father. And then for someone who taught me a bit about writing, someone whom I think we share a common experience, the bearer bride of senior English, Selma Brutsley, who could cowl somebody five times her size. The classes I taught in the high school were composed of exceptional children. We thought so. I thought so when I thanked my heavenly father for it. Yeah, I was talking to someone last night who said he would get up a three-day mat about her. He would be ready to, you know, kill her. But God, I loved her. And I, at the time, at the same time, I'd love her, but at the same time I could wring her neck. But you came out of there and you knew what the written word was all about. And if you were one of the people she considered, that had a touch of talent, she wouldn't let you do second-rate work. And what was this?

This was the place where this was the post. What do you call it? The Hitching Post. Hitching Post. And there was a round ring that went up here where the people put the reins. Do you remember the horse had been hit? Yes, yes. Selma and Emma Brutsley are retired after lifetime of teaching in the martial public schools. When I was under their spell, Miss Emma May was principal of the junior high school, and Miss Selma taught senior English and journalism. You taught how many years Miss Selma? Oh, my land, oh nice, be bad. Forever. Say, three times, getting your mind. 47. 47 years. I was eight, there was eight, both of us were 18 years old when we started teaching. You taught 49 years, and you taught? But I started. We were all, we were all trying. We were 18. Behind the years when we started. We were reared in a home where learning was important. And reading was important. We were brought up to read and to love reading. And I don't remember a time in my life, Bill, when I did not want to be a teacher. We had a neighborhood of children,

whose name was you would recognize, that after school, every afternoon, we went to a vacant lot on West Rusk Street and played school every afternoon. And I never didn't know anything other than, I wanted to teach. And you told me that you kept your head where all of your youth? Down in a book. I was all the time reading. I didn't do a whole lot of things, some of the rest of them did, because I preferred reading. She didn't go out trick of treating on Halloween. No, I didn't do that, and I didn't ride in a wagon down to that place you in the house. A little wagon, it was a horse and a buggy. I just didn't like the whole lot of things I didn't care to do. I'd rather have been taught reading for a good book. I remember that my interest in poetry, in language, in the word, began with your reading aloud in class, Shelley and Byron. I never asked any students to read a poem. I read the poem to them. Why was that?

Because I knew I could do a better job than they. And I wanted them to have something that would make an impression of me. The people in the class wouldn't listen to one of their classmates reading a poem, but they listened to me. I will tell you this, and this you will find hard to believe too. One child, when I got through teaching some of the Shelley, came and asked me where she could order the complete works of Shelley. Poetry, if you please. And another one had saying, feeling about Lord Byron, and those two got complete works of those poets. But I always read to them poetry. I remember I can see you right now standing there. And I can see you standing in the middle of the corridor, acting as a diligent traffic control officer. And I can see Bill Moyers coming down the hall with books under his arms, and looking straight ahead

with an intent expression on his face, and then going into the library to take his perch as a library assistant. And I thought, that boy has more self-confidence than anyone I've ever seen. Because I feared what Miss Summer would do to me if I didn't go ahead and read it. Tell me about your most vivid recollection of growing up in Marshall. The games the children played, how free and happy and uninhibited children were. What kind of games? Made up out of their own minds, out of the own experiences you see Bill today, play is directed by a supervisor. Even a town, the size of Marshall, must have a play director. There must be parks for children to play in. The park we played in was a vacant lot across the street, thick with willow trees, not tall, but just tall enough for our mothers

to give us sheets to go and throw over the tops. And that is how we made our play houses, see? And we played all kinds of games in there, here, out of our head. We made them up. We just lived under the sheets there over the willow trees. You had to make your own play. We made our own play. We imagined things. Some of it, of course, we got out of books, ideas. We got out of movies, ideas. But we did that. And then we would dramatize certain plays. We would all get together, and I would be Jack Stanfast. And then we would be, no, you would be. I would be the drunk, the town drunk, or the thief, or the robber. And there was degrading. She, that was her opportunity to get even with me because she claims I knocked out her first tooth. And that won the game we played, either.

That is a truth. I don't even remember it. But I do, because I was the victim, see? What else did people do for fun? No, we had to. I don't know. Moofies, we went to Moofies. Just the reason for all kinds of movies. Oh, one real move is. And we would all go together, daddy, my mother, and the three children. They would be five, see, in that family. And it would cost us exactly 50 cents for the whole caboodle. Ten cents. Everybody got in. And the way we knew what was going to be was it Friday and Saturday night. Saturday night. On Saturday night. We would just wait breathlessly. On Saturday for the street car. No, it would be on Friday, a day ahead of time. To come along. To come along. Because there would be a big sign on the back of the street car. And it would say, six reels tonight. Nuff in UF, said, SED. But you left out the important thing. Six reels tonight, ten cents. I was getting to that presently for you.

Nuff said. Nuff said. I was going to get to that. You say, Nuff said. What kind of movies did you like? There are two classifications of movies in those days. One was called Shootin' and Killin'. The other was called Huggin' and Kissin'. And my father was the Shootin' and Killin'. And Salmon, I preferred the Huggin' and Kissin'. But having six reels, you had some books. You had six doses of it, SED. This was a big event for the family. Oh, why? It was the regularity of it never did become boring. That's the reason we ran down to the corner. West Houston to see if they were going to have six reels for ten cents. Nuff said. Someone told me that people in this town live by the whistle of the train. Was that true? They did. And don't they have to tell him the story? Tell him. But in that way, to be honest. Oh, no, tell him. Wait a minute. It doesn't work out. I'll let it do that. What's the story?

Wait just a minute. Do you hear by swear that you wouldn't want to use it? Because this is a lovely lady. Unless it's a good enough story there. I need to use it. You will need to use it. And you do not have to use the name. I'm not going to give you the name. Well, don't tell me. This is a woman. Yes, she's dead. She's dead. Oh, she's dead. But that doesn't mean you don't have to have the name. She lived on East Austin. And she taught in the East End School. You wouldn't know her. I would. That's cool. Yes, you wouldn't know. But she'll tell you. I'll tell you later. You may figure out. She lived on East Austin Street. And for some reason, she had to probably she had important home chores which she had performed before going to school. So along the clock was the five o'clock whistle from the T.P. shops. Everybody set there. You knew when five o'clock in the evening came because the whistle blew. You knew when noon came because of the whistle. You knew that it was time to get up.

If you weren't early rise up because of the whistle. The morning after her first morning after she retired, the whistle blew and she jumped out of bed and started to get dressed and all of a sudden she realized that the whistle no longer meant anything to her. So in her night down, she opened the front door and stood on the porch and thumbed her nose. At the whistle, at the time, at the whistle. At the T.P. train. The T.P. whistle. And that's all there is to the story. No, no, no, no. I was suspect that this lady would do anything like that, you know. I was suspecting her. You knew her. Yes. She was very prominent in the Baptist Church. She had charge of many things up there. And she really and truly was a very lovely person. Was that Miss Bessie Bryant? Oh! You guessed who he is.

Bill don't put it in the sky. I see. She was a good lady. She was a good lady. She was a good lady. She really got a good lady. She lived there way down there near the school. Yes. This is a lady. You remember Saturdays on the square? Oh, yes. Not only on the square, but all through town. Every Saturday night was the biggest event for the town's people, because every store was open. It was hard to make one's way through certain portions of the town, because Saturday was a go-to-town day. Farmers have come in there to live with wagons. Horseroom wagons are probably used in watermelon, corn, tomatoes. And the people would go to their shopping on the west side of the square there. And then you had the mercantile stores around until the Second World War. The square was very sharply divided. Black simply did not come on the east side of the square. They were pretty much all told not to. And they get knocked off the sidewalk. They shopped on the west side of the square. Now, a lot of the cheaper department stores were on the west side of the square.

And you as a white can go by something there. But a black didn't dare go on the other side. Now, that chain is during the war. But the square has always been something. My mother, who is now under 70s, used to make her first trips to town and a horse-nearing wagon from religion fields, which is about 12 miles south of here. They get up at three in the morning. And they put the kids in the back of the wagon with the produce. And they give them a blanket, and they go to sleep. And they wake up at sunrise when they came to Marshall. And all the farmers in Harrison County would be there. And now, they've been sold their produce by the kid of some candy. You can do their grocery shopping for the week. And then at three in the afternoon, load up and go home. There was one thing about going to town on Saturdays, which I feared, whether it were particularly during the daytime, and that was passing a saloon. There was a fear in my heart about going by a saloon, and seeing a man staggering on the streets, and knowing what had caused it. Well, with that... Well, the town that you see at that time, Bill, the town was what we call wet, open saloons. And there were groups of women who got together,

and men also, but primarily women, who determined that they would do something to have Marshall go dry. We all marched in white dresses, carrying a white flag. Our mother made our white flag by tearing up a sheet. Before the National Movement was somewhere around 1910 or 12. And everybody went through town singing this song. I don't know if I could sing it or not. That's right. I can't sing, but I will sing it anyway. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Marshall's going dry. The town went dry. And everybody was hilariously happy. How do you count for Marshall being ahead of the National Movement? Of course, we wore a very... Marshall has been a very tightly structured town. I think the people have cohesivized a better word.

And anything which would be for the betterment of the town, everybody rallied around it. There's, of course, I've never lived in Hawaii, except in Marshall. But there has been a cohesiveness about the town. I wish I was in the land of cotton. Shared values of membership in small town life gave the people here that cohesion they still talk of. But it also came from the past, the particular past of the old south. Before the Civil War, East Texas was settled by small farmers and large plantation owners who left the southern states looking for land where they could start over. With them, they brought the economy and values of the slave system. And they thought to keep it. During the Civil War, Marshall became the seat of civil authority for the Confederacy west of the Mississippi. And the loyalties continued to a cause that was lost but not forgotten. This is the old Marshall cemetery.

Been here since the city started in about 1842. Now, here is General Lane. He had a rather remarkable career in the Battle of San Jacinda in about a half a dozen Indian wars. He volunteered as a subtler and went to West Texas and followed Indians. And he came back and became a major general in the Civil War for the Confederacy. Well, the Confederacy. And raised a regiment here and then went on with them, fought the Pleasant Hill. In fact, we have about three or four Confederates generals buried in this cemetery. Most of them were living when I was a young man. My grandfather, my mother's father, was a captain in the Georgia infantry. And, of course, I heard a lot about that end of the war and about General Sherman. Marshall was the Richmond of the Confederacy west of the Mississippi.

Unspeakable profanity, though it be. Aren't there some Yankee soldiers buried here? Well, yes. Now that you mentioned it, we wouldn't go ahead and get around the door. You wouldn't go to Vichida. They are a few here. You see that monument way over in the corner, off to itself, off to itself, where they won't be bothered by us and we're not bothered by them. That largest monument is to the Yankee soldiers who died here in the prison camp. So it was really impossible, wasn't it? There have been a young man here to be a boy and not be aware of that powerful presence of the past, always. And you might say, you could reach out and catch it because you were going fishing every day with your grandpa who fought in that war. In Dixiel I not take my stand. Like other towns in East Texas, Marshall has its statue of Johnny Reb on the town square.

You couldn't stand here without thinking about the Confederate cause. At the same time, above it was the eagle, representing America, Union, Washington and Jefferson and Sam Houston too. The eagle was always greater than the statue, always above it. It was the stuff of ambition. It could make your heartbeat, but it was troubling too. What was it, Johnny Reb had fall for. You knew there was something terribly wrong about it, but something you couldn't run from either. And you knew and loved people who could still shed a tear for the south, still weep for the lost cause. All of you've heard of Mimosahal having you down at late Texas. Do you recognize it here in the pictures? That's right, there it is.

Hines Hughes is 80 years old. She's descended from one of the first families to settle in these parts. She taught English in the high school for years, taught it to us unforgidably, and is now the curator of the museum in the old courthouse. Mimosahal was built in 1844, and the blocker family have lived there ever since. And did you know that there they have a cemetery? Part of it's called the Webster Cemetery, and I call it Mimosahal Cemetery, and in it they have slaves. Now all of this was cotton. I can remember those times. Douglas Blocker grew up at the cotton plantation known as Mimosahal. He remembers when cotton was still keen. When did cotton finally die out of East Texas? I think you can date it with World War II. You know, before the war, cotton was number one. Now it's number ten. After the Civil War, most of the plantations were broken up, and the land divided. But Mimosahal was kept intact and worked by tenant farmers.

When I was growing up, it was still a picture of southern elegance and hospitality. As teenagers, we would drive by half-expecting to see Rhett Butler striding up the stairs in his riding boots. Today, Douglas Blocker lives here with his mother, Ethel, who once managed her cotton with a watchful eye. There's twelve hundred acres here. And it was about twelve tenants. I rode a mule, and he showed me a good saddle mule too. So I rode my twelve-wondered acres twice a day to see that my tenants were tened into their business. Because you know there's still anything they can lay their hands on. I got my crop people one day, because they all come. I paid them a set of pounds for picking. I paid them a whole dollar for the one that picked the most cotton. That's the way I got my crop page.

That's my father, who was almost 90 when he died. I think 76. Yes, and in May, and Maddie Groh had departed this life about Christmas. Maddie Groh? Yes, his dog. Maddie Groh was a dog. Maddie Groh. And buried in this honored place beside your father? Well, she was near first, and when Sullivan's man came wanting to know where my father was to go, I said next to Maddie Groh. She and my mother's dog did not get along, and so we weren't invited to the funeral. Now, this quadrant was the slave ground, because they were a family, as you will see in a most petting way over here. From those days, the markers were not permanent, and so just as we have lost markers inside and do not know. Here we have Henry Clay, Joe Allen, and Liv Johnson.

Now, they were slaves? Yes, they were the slaves, although their lives took them elsewhere after independence. They were not associated with the family in a business sort of way, but this was their family, in a sense, which we cannot understand, and they were felt to be. These men, who had spent years after emancipation as free men, come back all those years later to be buried in the place where they had been slaves. Because they felt that this was their family, and they were welcomed as family. That's hard for us to understand today, isn't it? Who can understand such a relationship, and yet there it is. It's hard for people who might tell about Marshall to believe that at one time Marshall owned more slaves, Harrison County had more slaves than any other county in Texas. In 1860, one man, you know, almost Scott. William Thomas Scott had over 500 slaves.

What impact did that era of the Civil War, those old anti-bellum days, have on Marshall in the 20th century? Oh, every phase, every area felt the impact. Religious, social, political, industrial, everythings of our culture felt the impact. Harrison politics, the reconstruction period, produced the citizens' poverty. In what year was that? 1876, right? That was the beginning of what we call our industrial expansion period. So the railroad had come here in 73. The whites can evoke, the Lulbridge in your courthouse was here. And during the reconstruction period, they had one entrance to it this way. And it was blocked off, roped off, to three days to vote. And the blacks completely flop in and would not let the whites even get into vote. This was the reconstruction era.

Well, the blacks, you know, all the officers were replaced by blacks. So the animosities kept building on both sides? Every one practically in the county had had grandfathers or fathers who had bought in the Civil War. And they carried, in fact, my step-daughter said she, who taught history, American history, in one of the towns in the counties that I tried to teach. So all year, I tried to teach American history with that Mitchey Logan's lane. And this was back in the 1930s. I was always struck by the fact that when Marshall Men have gone off in this century to fight in, that they are gone, to fight at Normandy, to fight at Korea, to fight Vietnam, it's the Confederate statue that's the memorial. That is typical of this area. The Dennis Scotsville cemetery, the Confederate memorial, over in the Marshall cemetery, the Confederate memorial. What do you think that did to our attitudes, our sins of ourself? I feel that we absorbed something of the dedication those people had to a principle.

They were willing to die for it, fight for it and die for a principle of individualism. And I'll tell you what Governor Clark's grandson, Hartzel Clark, who was president of the first national bank across the way, when integration was brought in. 64 wasn't it? He said, well, today we lost the Civil War. And that was the 1964. After that time, we had won it. Today, it's hard to believe that only 20 years ago, a dozen years after I finished high school, did this officially cease to be two towns. We had existed so long in separate realities, half black, half white, separate schools, separate drinking fountains, separate lives. Deep down, you might know something was wrong, but you didn't work to admit it to yourself or share it with others. I remember as a kid about five or six years old, a little in the house that ran alongside an alley that went down the cotton gin.

And wagons, horse-drawn wagons with cotton would come behind. You know, boats would fall out, and we would crab it, my cousins and I. We'd make our own little cotton fields, as kids would do. And one day, a little white boy jumped off the wagon and decided to sit there and play with us, while I guess if his father took the load on down to the gin. And one of my aunts came out of the front portion and said, little nigger boy, go on. You can't play here. He jumped up and ran, and I couldn't understand why, because he was just like us. He was out in the dust, having a good time. There was a old chap of Luda Denise Marshall, who was the brother of one of my high school teachers, who called a bunch of us kids one day and showed us a big photograph he had of five or six black seniors from a tree on the campus of what it's now. He's sexist about his college, big old trees up there. These were people who lynched around the turn of the century. And then he pulled out a piece of the old dried rope with bloodstains, a brown, he said bloodstains on it, and showed it to us and made his handle this as part of the lynching rope. I felt physically sick. That people, I knew and I lived with could have done such a thing. Or their grandfather's could have done such a thing.

That was physically ill. Staying with you long time? That nightmare is about a several nights. And I knew from then on, I was probably 11, 12 years old. There was a dark side of this town that we didn't know about. Marshall, Texas, Marshall, Texas. There really were two worlds here. If you grew up in one, you didn't trespass the other, except superficially. That's the hardest thing to acknowledge or understand today, that our history could have held such advantage over our moral imagination, that you could grow up so pleasantly and so small a place, well-chirched, well-loved, well-taught, and not apprehend the reality of others. The radio station that signed off with Dixians did the star-spangled banner. You knew that wasn't right, but it was custom. Custom. Something repeated over and over again until it became the way things are. Custom taught you to keep your distance, even if on a Wednesday evening you came down and set outside this black church as I did and listened to the choir practice. We lived in the same small town, witnessed to the same faith, sang and prayed to the same God, and kept our distance, except for the music.

I've been praying for such a long time, praying for some peace of mind. Here I am, Lord, my heart and my soul, waiting you to take us home. I need you, Lord, my heart and my soul, waiting you to take us home. When I was growing up, Marshall had two black colleges, Wiley and Bishop. Bishop has moved to Dallas, but Wiley remains.

When change came to Marshall, students from Wiley and Bishop brought it. Wiley and Bishop brought it. Wiley and Bishop brought it. James Farmer, he was born in Marshall in 1922. I never knew him, but when I was a boy, he was a student at Wiley where his father taught. Our native son returns home. He's just good to have Dr. Farmer here. Let us welcome Dr. Farmer. He would own to found the Congress of Racial Equality, an important civil rights organization in its day, but his awakening came here in Marshall, Texas. I hope by young friends, my brothers and sisters of Wiley College, that you are a part of the tradition which has made this college great.

I hope that you are aware of all that is gone before you, and thus are conscious of the responsibility which you bear. In 1954, the Supreme Court has said, look, here Mr. Jim Crow, it's time you were dead. Hallelujah, Alma Traveling, hallelujah, eight and fine. Hallelujah, Alma Traveling, downed freedom's main line. Most of you are far too young, all of you indeed to remember it. You were not born in the early 1960s. You were not born at the time of the Freedom Rides. We rode into Jackson, and we were still singing. If you can't find me in the back of the bus, you can't find me nowhere. Oh, come on up to the front of the bus. I'll be riding up there, and we pulled into the terminal of Jackson. Then the White Freedom Riders would begin singing. If you can't find me in the front of the bus, you can't find me nowhere. Come on back to the back of the bus. I'll be riding back there.

It was rocking all over the jail. It was running rough. Stop that singing. Stop that singing. Cut out that singing. What was this neighborhood like when you lived here in the 30s? Well, this street, of course, was here, but it was not paved. It was red to clay, mud when it rained. This is my house. This is where I lived from age 13 to 18. I would go downtown occasionally to make a few purchases. Usually I would go down to see a movie in the movie house. I think it was the paramount theater in those days. Significantly, blacks set up in the balcony. We called it the buzzer truest. So when we walked downtown, we would go around to the side entrance and up those stairs and see the movie. You weren't allowed in the front entrance. We were not allowed in the front entrance and not allowed to sit downstairs.

I mean, what went through your mind when such an occasion was there? Or did anything? Yes, almost invariably. The students used to have discussions every night. We call them bull sessions and now they're called rap sessions. We would tell ourselves in each other in louder and louder terms how horrible segregation was and that something must be done about it. And we have to put an end to it. But that didn't go very deep because the very next afternoon, we would walk down to the paramount theater, go around to the side entrance, up those stairs and sit in the buzzer truest. Did this reality not beat the spirit down? What it did was to stimulate me to participate in a movement that would try to bring about change. Did you have any hope that that change might occur here in Marshall? Yes, I hope it would occur all over the country. I doubt it would be difficult here in Marshall because it was a small town. And the two worlds, the black world and the white world, which seemingly passed like ships in the night, had such little contact. And Marshall seemed to me at that time to be a city that had a built-in resistance chain.

People were quite comfortable. There was an etiquette. Everyone knew what he supposed to say, how he was supposed to act and lived by it. When you say etiquette, describe it. An etiquette for white people and an etiquette for black people. Oh, yes, very much indeed. The fact that black was not to be called Mr. He could be called anything else. He could be called Reverend. He could be called Dr. He could be called, of course, boy or uncle if he were old enough for that appellation. But not Mr. That was taboo. Because that would sort of symbolize an equality. Did anybody tell you this is wrong? This has to be changed. This is an affront to humanity. Of course. We had one professor, Professor Melvin B. Tolson, who was a professor of English, a coach of debate and director of dramatics. He subsequently, by the way, became well-known black poet in almost any anthology of black American poetry, includes works by Tolson.

The intellectually bent students would congregate at his home in the evenings, and there we would read his poetry and comment on it. On his classes, he taught everything. He compelled people to think, how well I remember one day, when I was a freshman in Tolson's class. He saw me walking across the campus a good distance away and he yelled, I responded. He said, what are you reading these days? I told him that I was reading Tolstoy's war and peace. He smiled and said, that is fine. I'm glad to know that at least you are reading the broth of knowledge. But why don't you eat the meat? What do you mean? Well, he meant I was reading fiction, though it is great fiction. He wanted me to read other things as well. Wasn't there an effort at that time to dismiss men of that? Well, he had a problem a couple of years before I entered Wiley College. Tolson had been told to get out of town.

To be out by sundown the next day, Tolson's friends gathered at his home and they were going to sit it out because he did not intend to leave. However, the president of the college, Dr. Dogen, was a good friend of probably the most influential white in town, the banker. He called Mr. Keyes the banker and explained the problem and said, Mr. Tolson is my best teacher and we just can't get along without him. And he's been told now by some people in town that he's got to be out of town by sundown. And I don't know what happened to Wiley College without Mr. Tolson. Well, we understand that Mr. Keyes told Dr. Dogen that he didn't worry about it, that he would take care of the matter. And he did. And Tolson remained. What was it like in Black Marshall for teenager in those days?

We could not go into any restaurant downtown except the little lunch counters which existed in the black communities. But downtown, we could not eat it to lunch counter in any of the drug stores, any of the variety stores. We could not go into any of the hotels. That was another world, another world which we knew existed but thought about as little as we could. Because it was painful to think of the fact that we were told you're not good enough to associate with other people. If we were shopping for objects such as clothing, we were weighted on but after the whites had been weighted on in most cases. And then we're not allowed to try on clothing. There were exceptions to that. Well-known persons in the community, such as the president of Wiley College, Dr. Dogen at the time, Professor Pemberton, who was the principal of Central High School at the time, they and their families were known and I'm sure tried on clothing. But most of us did not. It made shopping rather difficult.

We could go into the variety stores, the five and ten-cent stores as they would then call and make purchases at all counters except that one which was forbidden, the lunch counter. Did you decide here at Wiley College to challenge the system? Oh, yes. Yes, there's no question about it. I decided it out of my contact with Professor Tolson here, the campus radical, and the conflict within my own soul. In opposing segregation with my words, but with my deeds adapting to it, like going downtown to the movie theater, walking up those side stairs and sitting in the balcony, the buzzards roost. Core, the Congress of Racial Equality, which I founded in 1942 in the city of Chicago, was stimulated to a great extent by that contradiction, which I felt when I was here at Wiley. In 1960, when college students throughout the south were sitting in and marching, I cannot tell you how pleased I was when I picked up the New York Times one morning and saw that Wiley College students were a part of it.

They too were marches, right? That made me weak and brought me to tears. We are here for what is ours, what we deserve, and what is rightly America. We are America, and we will be treated as America. Spring 1960 protests against segregation sweep the south. The whites of Marshall, long accustomed to a Dawson population of blocks, are stunned when students from Wiley and Bishop College ask for service at all white lunch counters and refuse to leave when they're denied it. The students are arrested, 400 others gather on the courthouse square in sympathy, they're dispersed forcibly.

Local police call in highway patrolman and Texas Rangers. The students are charged with unlawful assembly. A friend of mine will look back one day and say, we were two worlds waiting for an event. This was it. The students are in the courthouse and sang and prayed there and made their demands and they were host and the students who returned to the campus, of course, returned wet and there was one young ministerial student who said to me, oh, when I ask, what happened to you? What happened to you? He said, oh, Miss Jenkins, I'm wet but I'm happy. Inaz Jenkins is now a associate professor of religion and philosophy at Wiley College. The students had come of age, the black youth had come of age. And as I've often said, I felt that the time had come and they were just open. The time had come. What do you mean by that? Blacks had had about a hundred years of education and if education has value, if it's a search for truth, if it brings enlightenment, certainly the students would be awakened, you know, to what this country is all about.

I was dean of women at the time that our students were arrested here in the local jail and the two Texas Rangers delivered these subpoenas. Two Texas Rangers came to arrest them. Rangers, yes, and I'd never seen a Texas Ranger before and they were tall, beautiful human beings but yet a little bit frightening to me and those guns, you know, on their hips and I like what you see in the movies, you know. And so, and I had never been that close to a gun before, believe it or not. And I offered them the courtesy of my office to have seats and as we talked together, I also noted that they had not taken off their hats and I asked them to do so. And they refused and so I told them about this wonderful story that I'd heard where President Teddy Roosevelt passed, Booker T. Washington, who was then the president of Tuskegee Institute and Mr. Washington tipped his hat to the president and of course the president returned the courtesy and his wife asked him why did he tipped his hat to that Negro?

And the president said, I could not afford to allow a black man to be more courteous than the president of the United States. And then I said to them, how much I admired their people that all of them that I had met always rose to the level of their culture. And so the basis, if you don't mind by saying so, turn red and the hats came off and those two men shook hands with me. What about redeeming the town? Did it serve that purpose?

Yes indeed, because now Marshall has a black postmaster and you have black clerks in the banks, black saleswomen in the stores. So change has come to Marshall. There's been a black mayor, a county commissioner, the schools are integrated and sports of course. The Medical Association has even elected a black physician as president. His name is Izzy Lemoff. Perhaps it says something about the nature of a small town that like the students of Wiley College who challenged the way things were, he too came here from someplace else. Who knows how long we might have hugged the past tightly if the world had only let us be. I couldn't even practice on the staff at hospital for a whole 15 years. What happened to a black person in Marshall who needed hospitalization? We as black physicians would call a white physician and ask him to please admit this patient to the hospital.

And he would then take the case and treat the patient in the hospital then after the patient got well or whatever and was ready for discharge. He would, if he felt so inclined and felt that maybe we might send him some more, he'd send the patient back. But he was free to keep the patient and in some cases they did. Mrs. Lemoff, you came from Washington, DC. What was your impression when you arrived in Marshall? At first I didn't notice it, but then as I started to get out in the community it hit. How? Little incidents being called by my first name, this type of thing. And it made me very angry. The one thing that I found that was quite common with those who had been here, those who come from Marshall, those blacks particularly,

they all seem to be subservient to the white community. There was never any disagreement, there was disagreement while they were in their own group. I mean they talk about all that went on, but when they got down in front of the white power structure it was different. So there wasn't any concerted kind of an effort to change situations at all. Your daughter was the first black child to be admitted to the Catholic school in Marshall. What happened when you took her? It's like George Wallace standing in the doors of the University of Alabama. It was like, really, because when we took her, the people were standing in the doors. Literally? To keep her out? Yes. I walked with that child with such determination that they knew I did not intend to be stopped. The sun was shining beautifully and I had an umbrella in my hand.

And we intended to go to school that day, and we did. The people weren't very friendly. Nobody smiled, but we did go to school. Has all the scar tissue, the struggle, the pain been worth it? Oh, sure. Dog on, yeah. We've seen so much change and so much happen. Good until that that's left is sort of like mopping up, really. Personally and individually, you are accepted. Not as a whole group of people. I don't think. Publicly, you're accepted because of the public accommodations. But privately, we still are. I'm not terribly bitter about that and as I have told some of my white friends,

I have lovely, black friends, and they keep me very happy. So I can find contentment in that. Marshall, Texas, Marshall, Texas. It's not even a town anymore. It's an all-American city and rightly proud of being so. But as we know from this century, the good things do not come to a singly. They arrive with a mixture. I was nurtured here and cherished the memories. When I knocked on the door, it opened. But the place that anchors one man can be another's prison. Changes feared by some set others free.

The Marshall I knew is remembrance only. The years have swept it away. The center is gone and with it the sense of place that made small towns the focus of life at the turn of the century. But just as many people live here now is ever. It's their home, too. And their realities mean as much to them as mine did to me. So I will be careful not to boast to my grandchildren about the good old days or explain away those that weren't. I will tell them, however, of the small town that once existed in America and for better or worse is no more. That was five years ago. I've been back to Marshall often since then. My parents still live there. They're 81 and 85 years old now. And about to celebrate their 63rd wedding anniversary. As for other folks in the film, sure enough, Wyatt Moore stayed out of bed and got to see Haley's comet again.

This time around with his grandchildren. He's 88, still poking about the boughs on the lake he calls his. Still catching fish and telling tales. Some of them he's put into a book every son that rises. Miss Selma and Miss Emma May still live in the house with the hitching post out front. Their memories float through time now. But they still remember not to tell you how old they are. Joe Golden, my old friend from high school, recently published a new book, a controversial and critical look at the New York Times. Now he's working for a conservative media watchdog group. Two very different paths for a couple of Marshall boys who wanted to be journalists. I wonder which one I was with wrong. Wiley College opened its doors for the 115th time last September. It has a new president, Dr. David Buckley, and a new finance chairman for the Board of Trustees. Dr. Izzy Lemoff, in the last three years they've managed to reduce the college debt from $7 million to $1 million.

Dr. Lemoff's wife Grace is chair of the Salvation Army in town. Wiley's famous son James Farmer has written a book about the civil rights movement, Leigh Bear the Heart. He's teaching at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and is now blind. Some familiar faces are gone now. Barbecue lovers who come around for a brown pig miss James and Francis Neely. He died last year. She passed on just this spring. But James's brother Arvel is guarding the family's sauce recipe at the second Neely's in town. Hobart Key joined his ancestors three years ago. He's not buried in the city cemetery, but in Greenwood, where there's not a single Yankee soldier to bother him. Ethoblocker is gone too. She died just last February at the age of 99. She and her son Douglas had sold the family plantation Mimosahal and moved to town. The old courthouse, once the center of town, has a new look. It's now the focus of the Wonderland of Lights Festival.

Every Christmas the town glitters with over two million tiny lights, 22 miles of them on the courthouse alone. 400,000 visitors came around to see the spectacle last year. There's something else new in Harrison County, global politics of all things. Last September, Vice President Bush came to the munitions plant right down the road, where many martialites worked, to inaugurate a new era in Soviet-American relations. For the first time a missile was destroyed under the intermediate nuclear forces treaty signed by Reagan and Gorbachev in 1987. Every two months now a new team of Soviet inspectors arrives in Marshall. After hours they practice a little glass nose on the local level with the hometown folks in the stores, restaurants and theaters even on the football field. And oh yes, last fall for the first time in 20 years, Marshall beat Longview in football. The score was 28 to nothing. That's one change everybody can welcome.

Well, everyone who comes from Marshall and don't we all. I'm Bill Moyers. This program has been made possible by all of you. This program has been made possible by a grant from the Schumann Foundation. For a transcript of this program sent four dollars to Journal Graphics,

67 Broadway, New York, New York, 1007. This program has been made possible by all of you.