Tip of the Arrow

By Charles A. Bonner

The purpose of my book, The Tip of the Arrow, A Study in Leadership, is to share with young people of today and tomorrow the story of young people like me at age sixteen as the blueprint of the Selma Student Nonviolent Civil Rights movement, a significant impacting factor in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the dominating influence leading to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. On February 24, 2016, during a ceremony awarding the Congressional Gold Medal at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, I beamed with personal pride upon hearing Speaker Paul Ryan's statement that Congress decided to bestow the award to the foot soldiers because their contribution to our country was so great that they deserved the highest honor in our possession, the Congressional Gold Medal. The Tip of the Arrow is our story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645443995

Book preview

Chapter 1

Birth of A Movement

If my dog loves your dog,

And your dog loves my dog,

And my dog loves your dog,

And your dog loves my dog

So why can’t we sit under the apple tree?

You want to walk with me: you want to talk with me

So why don’t you hold my hand

And tell me you understand now

Can’t you see that you and me

We could be so happy

Sitting under the apple tree

—Bernard LaFayette

Dr. King with Bernard LaFayette

It is just another day in February of 1963. The waning Sunday afternoon sun is still bright and golden, warming the chilly air. Men wearing crumpled hats, caps, and light coats are lining up at Miz Mary Tate’s house to buy a fifty-cent shot of bootlegged corn whiskey. My best friend, Cleo, and I are pushing my mom’s green 1954 Ford south on Church Street, just past Miz Mary’s house, when our classmate, Nate Tate, opens his screen door and roars in a deep belly laugh, Y’all run out of gas again! Cleo, still dressed in his dark church suit and white shirt, his tie loose, is pushing from the rear while I am steering and pushing. He joins in Nate’s fun. Yeah, with no gas, Charles is gonna be hoofing that two miles to see Viola tonight!

Cleo and Nate’s laughter stops the slow roll of the car, and I look up. To my right I see a slight, young, light brown-skinned man in his early twenties, dressed in a yellow button-down shirt, black tie, and sports jacket, walking past the red-and-white Coca Cola sign of Lawson’s Grocery Store. Now he is moving diagonally from Minter Street at the crosswalk, past the lady in the pink dress coming home from church in her matching white shoes and big hat, and he is walking directly toward us.

He’s not from here. I can tell by his walk flashes through my mind. He is walking straight to the car and, with a friendly smile and reaching out with both hands, is beginning to push next to Cleo.

Hi, fellows. I’m Bernard LaFayette. What’re your names? You live around here?

A little astonished, Cleo replies politely, Yeah, I’m Cleophus Hobbs.

And I am Charles Bonner, I call out as the car rolls a bit faster with this stranger’s added pushing. We are turning right, heading west on Small Street, and then left into the driveway of my big yellow house.

As I am applying the parking brake and closing the car door, the guy continues, "My wife, Colia, and I just moved to Selma from Tennessee. We are organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, sounds like Snick. We have come to Selma to organize you students in a voter registration drive and in direct action to integrate Selma, all of Selma: the lunch counters, library, movie theaters, schools, and restaurants, all the public places."

Come up, have a seat, I offer, bewildered but intrigued by these alien concepts. Walking up onto my porch, the guy sits down in the green metal chair, I sit on the matching green swing, and Cleo is leaning against the porch’s vertical pillar, sitting on the porch railing, one foot propped on top of the railing.

The stranger continues to talk enthusiastically, "I am a minister, and SNCC members have been staging sit-ins in Nashville, Greensboro, and Atlanta. This is the kind of direct action we want you students to use to organize here in Selma. We have been going into ‘white only’ places and demanding service. We have been beaten bloody and jailed, and a few students have been killed. But no matter what, we have to do this. And the main thing is that we are always nonviolent. No matter how much they beat us, spit on us, pour hot coffee on us, or kick us, we will not fight back. We will be nonviolent. That’s what we need to do here too. This is what you students need to do here in Selma. It won’t be easy and it will be dangerous, but black folks have been in slavery too long, and we’ve been second-class citizens too long. We are going to change that. You are going to change that. You are going to bring freedom to Selma!"

Cleo and I look at each other in total disbelief. As we listen to this stranger speak, the smell of lemon-vinegar barbecue sauce from Ben’s Café next door slowly drifts over us. I am thinking, Who is this guy? Why is he a preacher and so young? I thought all preachers were born old, with little wire-rimmed eyeglasses, elastic suspenders holding up gray suit trousers, exposing high-top black brogan shoes, with little metal hoops to tie the shoestrings. And they smell funny. I have never seen a preacher this young, and he talks good English, sounds just like white folk, and he is calling us black folks, not colored, not Negroes, but black folks. Wow!

Cleo loudly interrupts my train of thought. What do you mean, we are willingly gonna let white folks hit us, spit on us, kick us, and not hit back? he protests with an incredulous frown of laughter and serious astonishment. We don’t bother white folks. Young white boys always mess with us all the time, trying to provoke us into fighting, but we know to just walk away. But if they ever, I mean ever, attempt to hit one of us, then they are going to get a definite precision ass whoopin’. That’s just the way it’s done. We’re not gonna let nobody, black or white or polka dot, hit or kick or spit on us or abuse us without a war.

I am laughing my agreement and giving high fives to Cleo, expressing my shock and amazement at this guy’s statements about nonviolent direct action. This guy is gonna get killed. Does he know he’s in Selma? Does he know Sheriff Clark? I am trying to understand what exactly he is talking about. This is crazy talk.

But he just smiles and continues to talk over the sound of cars swishing by on busy Small Street. Black folks are in the majority in Selma, almost 60 percent, but you don’t have any black elected officials. Colia and I just moved into a house owned by one of your teachers, Ms. Margaret Moore, on First Avenue, and when we were speaking with her and Ms. Amelia Boynton, they told us that there are only a handful of black folks registered to vote here in Selma. You must change that. You students will need to organize, go door-to-door, canvass every neighborhood, teach people how to pass the literacy tests, and get them to the registrar’s office to register to vote. You students will have to lead the adults because they are afraid. They are scared of losing their jobs, their homes, and their lives. But we must be free. Across the river, in Lowndes County, black folks make up more than 80 percent of the population, but they haven’t voted since Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, since Reconstruction. You must change this. You must organize for freedom.

Bernard’s eyes are dancing as he speaks, his ginger-colored face constantly changing, smiling, laughing, frowning, his voice passionate. We will be free! His words echo in my head, and they echo in my heart. He’s crazy, but I want to hear more of this.

Are your mothers and fathers registered to vote?

No, Cleo and I respond in unison.

What do your parents do? What kind of work?

Cleo volunteers, My mother is a teacher. My stepfather works various jobs and is a part-time minister. I don’t know what my actual father does. I see him driving around occasionally, but I haven’t got any interaction with him.

I contribute, My mother is disabled with lung disease from working at the cigar factory. My grandmother works cleaning house for white people for twelve dollars a week. She works for Mr. Oliver and his daughter, taking care of her kids. He’s the man who owns the Cleaners across the street. I work for him after school in the afternoons, delivering the cleaning to people all over town.

Bernard probes further, How is life in Selma? Do you feel that there is injustice? Have you felt it? When did you first feel injustice?

We are both nodding vigorously. Selma is rough! The KKK rules this town, from the mayor and the sheriff down to the judges. If you’re not white, you have no rights. White folks treat their dogs, horses, and cows better than they treat us. Some people say the white folks need a license to kill a deer. They don’t need nothin’ to kill a black man. Cleo is visibly angry, rolling his head and his eyes, almost sputtering in his outrage. He has it right, I am thinking.

He continues, "My family moved from Montgomery to Selma when I was eleven years old because I got in a fight with a white boy a little older than me. That day, I had left school and gone to boxing practice at the boys’ club. It was my third year of boxing. I was walking through the white neighborhood, about to cross the railroad tracks heading home, when two big white boys, looked like they could be fourteen or fifteen, started yelling at me, calling me nigger. ‘Nigger! Hey, nigger, answer me and say ‘Yes, sir’ to me, nigger! Say sir to me, nigger!’ I continued walking, stepping a little faster, looking down. I was scared, but I was mad too. The bigger one of the two grabbed my book bag on my shoulder. I stopped. ‘Don’t touch me!’ He swung at me, I ducked, and pow! To his stomach with a quick left, followed by a right with all my might to his mouth. Blood splattered everywhere, even on his buddy. I stood back, fists ready for his buddy, mad as hell, but he just stood there. He just froze.

The one I had hit screamed, ‘Nigger, you made me bleed! Look what you’ve done to me! You are a dead nigger. I’m going to tell my daddy, and you are a dead nigger.’ I knew he was going to do it too. I was already as good as dead. I walked backward slowly, and then I turned and ran home, looking behind me every few minutes to see if they were already after me. When I got home, shaking, I explained to my mother and stepfather what had happened. They acted fast. Within a week, we moved to Selma, where most of my family is living. We are originally from here, out in the country, a little area called Beloit. That’s when I met Charles, when we moved across the street from Charles, to the next street behind us, Short Griffin Street. And we got into a fight the very first day we met, but we’ve been like two peas in a pod ever since.

And you, Charles, when was your first awareness that we black folks are treated unfairly? Where did you grow up? He turns to me.

I hesitate. Slowly I say, "I was born in Selma, but my first memories are of this kind lady taking me by the hand, pulling me away from my mother. I am struggling to get away from her with all my might, reaching, grasping for my mother, Bern. Her name is Bernice. ‘It’s okay, Charles. This is Aunt Nell. She’s going to take care of you. It’s okay. Don’t cry.’ I can see that Bern is crying too, and that makes me cry even more.

"I am crying and sobbing and calling, ‘Bern…Bern…I want Bern.’ The round-waisted lady, smelling like spring flowers, leads me onto a big blue bus with a white engine hood. We are walking all the way through the bus, passing all the white people, to the very last seats in the back. Through my tears, I see trees after trees and cotton and corn and more cotton and corn and fields and fields of crops of stuff growing everywhere as the bus is rolling down the blacktop road. I keep sniffing and crying, wanting Bern. The bus stops. We are walking down the steps, and a very tall man wearing a hat, walking with a little limp, is coming toward us, looking at us and smiling broadly at me. ‘Charles. How are you, big boy?’ He is sweeping me up off my feet, holding me in a bear hug. ‘Let’s go see some horses and pigs and cows.’ I am still thinking of Bern, but loving the affection from this man. I don’t have a father. Bern says he disappeared when I was a baby.

"We are climbing into a black car. The back door opens funny. The handle is up front, and the door is opening backward. Never seen a car door open like this. We are driving down a red gravel road, passing wagons pulled by mules, people walking or riding horses, some without saddles, and with burlap sacks across the horses’ backs. I see more cotton, and we cross a red iron bridge over a big creek. The water is muddy, the banks white like chalk, and silvery moss is hanging down almost to the water. We are passing a church and cornfields, and then we are turning left down a little sandy road, trees hanging over the road, going through a shady tunnel of forest. We are coming out of the tree tunnel, and I see a big wooden house, green plum trees with red and yellow plums, blackberry bushes, and peaches hanging from a bunch of trees. Turkeys and ducks and chickens are clucking and chasing one another everywhere. There are so many things to see. I am almost forgetting to cry.

"‘Come on, go with Uncle AC to see the horses.’ We are walking past a family of big-bellied hogs toward three horses. Two are red horses, one with a white blaze down his face, and a black one. ‘This is Red Rider. She is going to be your horse.’ ‘Wow, my horse?’ I rub her neck just like Uncle AC does. I feel relieved for the first time. I feel at home.

"Uncle AC and Aunt Nell always proudly parade me in front of people at church, at the store at Five Points, where the big blue bus had stopped, and in Orrville, the little town close by. Aunt Nell takes me to her ‘women only’ Easter Star Meetings and tells the ladies, who are all dressed in white, ‘He is three. You know, Bern was only sixteen when he was born. She got a job at the cigar factory, lied about her age, told them she was eighteen.’ She tells her lady friends the story over and over and over again. Aunt Nell and Uncle AC don’t have any kids. Now they have me and, two years later, my brother Calvin. We are their kids.

The first time I felt injustice? I’m seven years old. It must be around 1953. I’m still living in Orrville, Alabama, my tiny country village, twenty-five miles southwest of Selma in a little cotton village called Crumptonia. My Uncle AC is a cotton sharecropper.

Slowly I continue with my memories, "I’m about seven years old. I’m standing in a sea of white cotton, watching the sweat roll down the shiny brown faces of my aunt Nell and Uncle AC and about five other people who are helping them to pick cotton. I see these Negroes strung out all across the fields, with long white cotton sacks dragging behind them, singing or humming ‘Amazing Grace’ as they slowly move forward. The brutal, moist heat is shimmering over the endless rows of cotton, the sun is beating down, and we can’t see the end of the rows. I am talking to my cousin Bay-Love, who is a little older than me, my legs and my fingers already hurting with tiredness, and it’s only the middle of the day.

"Suddenly I see a big green watermelon with white stripes growing between the cotton stalks. I look at Bay-Love, pointing to the watermelon, and we are dropping down on our knees. I’m hitting the watermelon with my fist to break it open. It’s not breaking. I am slamming it to the ground. It bursts open with a loud crack. I pass one half to her, and we are grabbing the cool heart of this deep red watermelon, and I stuff it greedily into my mouth, juices dripping down between my fingers. I can see it dripping down her little black fingers. Down beneath the tall cotton stalks, we are eating, we’re laughing, we’re hiding from the cruel sun. I say, ‘President Abe Lincoln freed the slaves, Mrs. Hall told us. This cotton field sure looks like slavery to me.’ We giggle until we cry. Bay-Love and I are just laughing because it seems so funny that here we are living and working like slaves, getting paid a penny for every pound of cotton but being told that we are free. When we get back to picking cotton, I look at the big white mansion up on the hill, and I feel angry, and I swear I’m getting away from here. I’m a little guy, but I know this isn’t right.

"Mrs. Hall is our teacher at Athens School, our little one-room school behind Athens Baptist Church. The school doesn’t have paint. It’s a weather-beaten shack, just planks painted black for the chalkboard. All the grades, first through sixth, are together in one small room, with a potbellied black stove in the middle. So that’s my first recollection that things aren’t fair for us.

Every day I am seeing the white kids boarding and riding on the school buses while I walk from my house down through thick forest, along sandy small roads leading out to the gravel road, down to the little church school. The white kids pass by in new yellow school buses as we Negro kids walk along the dusty road. I’m aware that they’re white and we’re not. Something is grossly unfair. At seven years old, I don’t understand this difference, this unfairness, this unequal treatment. I see Mr. Henderson, the white man for whom most Negroes work, living in a big glistening white house, with big, round Roman columns and with a huge manicured green lawn. This is Crumptonia. A whole bunch of Negroes live in little log cabins on Mr. Henderson’s property and work for him. He operates a little store, and we have to go to the rear of his house and ring the bell to buy sodas, sardines, or Tide laundry detergent. I see Negro men and women looking down to the ground when they are speaking to him or to any white people. I can’t understand these differences. And so I…I have grown up with this bitterness, with this hatred, this anger toward white people because of the way they are treating us.

I am surprised how deeply angry I am when I talk about all this. I didn’t know I had so much resentment stored up. All of us are quiet for a few moments as the afternoon light darkens.

Chapter 2

February 1963: We Must Be Nonviolent

Love is doing small things with great love.

—Mother Teresa

Cleophus Hobbs

Bernard returns to the issue of nonviolence. You must organize. Unity through organization and nonviolence, these are our weapons for victory. We can only win with nonviolence. Cleo and I are looking at each other again, clearly not buying into this nonviolent thing. Bernard keeps pushing forward. Listen. Do you know Mahatma Gandhi? We both nod.

Do you know the name of the man who killed Gandhi? We look at each other, back at Bernard, confused. Have you ever heard anything about the man who killed Mahatma Gandhi?

We shake our heads. No. We don’t know who killed him.

Well, you have heard of Jesus Christ, but do you know who killed him?

Well, obviously, I say, loosening my burgundy tie and opening my navy blue shirt, we know he was killed by Roman soldiers, but the name of the person who killed him, no, we don’t know that. And we just came from church, but that is not something they teach.

His passion rises. Well, you know Gandhi and Jesus because they were men of nonviolence. And their names and their legacies have lived and will live forever in history. The reason you do not know the man who killed Gandhi or the man who killed Jesus is because those men were evil. Evil fades from the pages of history. We must be morally right. We must be nonviolent.

Cleo and I are silent and finally impressed by this new concept. There is a long silence. We look at each other.

What do you want us to do? Cleo finally questions.

Yes, how do we do this organizing? I add.

Bernard smiles. Meet Colia and me in the basement of Tabernacle Baptist Church after school tomorrow, Monday. Tell all your classmates and any other kids you can contact. We will teach you nonviolent techniques and strategies, how to protect yourselves during a demonstration. We will also teach you freedom songs, like this one. Bernard is singing in a tenor voice with perfect pitch:

Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me

And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free

No more moaning, no more moaning, no more moaning over me

And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free

No more weeping, no more weeping, no more weeping over me

And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free

Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me

And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free

There’ll be singin’, there’ll be singin’, there’ll be singin’ over me

And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free

There’ll be glory, there’ll be glory, there’ll glory over me

And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free.

Bernard gives us a little wave and walks down the stairs, taking a couple of steps down Small Street. Cleo and I are sitting quietly. We are blown away, awed by a vision of change.

Hey—Cleo leans forward and calls to him—we can go to your house now. How long are y’all going to be in Selma? I am still silent, stunned. We have never seen or talked with a man such as this one. I look across the street and see that it’s five o’clock on the big round clock with its red neon ring illuminating the numbers, hanging over the door of Oliver’s Cleaners, where I work after school. Wow, three hours just went by and we didn’t even notice it.

Bernard laughs, Sure, come on. Meet my wife, Colia. We walk and talk until we get to Miz Moore’s house. A beautiful young woman with caramel-colored skin opens the door with a wide smile. Colia, these fellows are from R. B. Hudson High. They are juniors and ready to go out and register black folks to vote. They are willing to organize the school.

Her smile grows and her eyes sparkle. Welcome, guys. I am Colia. We are glad you want to work for freedom in Selma. Bernard and I are eager to start a voter education drive here in Selma.

What do we need to do to get Negroes registered to vote? Cleo asks.

Get all your classmates and all the students at R. B. Hudson High to meet us at Tabernacle tomorrow, Monday at 4 in the afternoon.

Once again, it’s Cleo who has the questions. What are some of the other songs you will teach us?

Bernard answers, This is a song I wrote with this fellow named Jim Bevel, called ‘Dogs.’ He sings beautifully, with hilarious fun, after a moment joined by Colia:

Dog, dog, dog, dog

My dog a-love-a your dog

And your dog a-love-a my dog

And my dog a-love-a your dog

And your dog a-love-a my dog

I’m talking about a black dog

I’m talking about a white dog

I’m talking about a coon dog

I’m talking about a rabbit dog

All them dog, all them dog

All them dog, Lord, Lord, all them dog a-love-a my dog

And then why can’t we sit under the apple tree

You won’t walk with me

You won’t talk with me

Well, why don’t you hold my hand

And tell me you understand

Now, can’t you see that you and me

We’ll be so happy

Sitting under the apple tree….

Cleo and I are wildly excited when we leave The Freedom House, as we are already calling Bernard and Colia’s apartment. I say, I can’t wait to tell Viola. It was her birthday a few days ago, and I am giving her a present tonight.

What did you get her? Cleo smiles curiously.

You are going to have to ask her when you see her at school tomorrow, is my only answer.

Okay, if you are going to hold out on me. Later. But, Charles, first thing tomorrow, we are going to tell everybody to go to Tabernacle. Meet you on the way to school in the morning. Oh, and happy hoofing to see Viola.

I am walking and thinking about this guy, Bernard, listening to the sound of my footsteps along the usual route I walk every Wednesday and Sunday night to see Viola: east on Small to Broad Street, left and north to First Avenue, and east to Range and one block north over to Second Avenue.

Viola has been my girlfriend since tenth grade. She opens the screen door to the porch. Her eyes are bright; her hair is shiny, perfectly styled since church this morning. What’s that you’re holding in that package, CharlesAdams? She always says my name with my middle name like it’s one word.

Just a little something for your birthday. I am excited to see if she likes it.

Oh, thank you! she exclaims, reaching out and extending a hug and a kiss. You didn’t have to do that. My birthday was a few days ago, you know.

Yes, I know, but I had to wait until I finished paying off the layaway. Go on and open it.

As she is ripping open the wrapping, we can hear Mahalia Jackson soulfully moaning on the radio.

CharlesAdams, this is fantastic—a Hi-Fi 45 record player. Wow! Thank you so very much. She reaches over and plants another big hug and kiss.

I can’t wait any longer, bursting out with the amazing event of the afternoon. "Listen, Cleo and I met this guy today, a young minister named Bernard LaFayette. We went to his house and met his wife, Colia. They work with an organization called SNCC, pronounced Snick. They want to organize all of us at Hudson High to educate our parents about the importance of voting. They also want us to integrate all the lunch counters, movie theaters, libraries, all the places with the White and Colored signs."

She is fascinated. How did they say we would do this?

With sit-ins and demands to be served. And we are to be nonviolent. They said we will probably go to jail, be beaten, and maybe some us killed. It sounds scary when I say it out loud.

Wow. Sounds dangerous, but it sounds also like hope, like Mahalia Jackson says. You know that my mom loves her. She says she sings only gospel music and refuses to sing the blues because gospel music gives you hope. When you finish singing the blues, you still got the blues. So CharlesAdams, maybe this man and his wife bring us hope.

I continue excitedly, Tomorrow, we are to meet him and his wife, Colia, in the basement of Tabernacle. I want you to go too.

Okay. Let’s go. It can’t hurt. We can see and hear what they have in mind. We certainly need to do something to change the way we are treated. This segregation can’t last forever.

I reply fervently, You are so right.

We quietly enjoy each other’s silences, sweet talk, and kisses until around nine o’clock. As I am leaving, I tell her, Happy seventeenth birthday. My age will catch up with yours in a few weeks.

While I make my two-mile return trek home, I keep mulling over the momentous meeting with Bernard LaFayette. I know this is what I want to do; this is what I must do!

At school the next morning, the halls are crowded. Lockers are banging, opening, closing; chatter regarding weekend activities is heard up and down the halls. Kids are eating quarter-pound Baby Ruth candy bars.

Hey, Jimmy, Jesse, Evelyn, Bettie, Carolyn, George, we are meeting at Tabernacle! right after school. The meeting is about freedom! We are going to change Selma! Tell everybody! We need you there! This is the message Cleo and I are spreading before, during, and after each class, at lunch, during recess on the playground, everywhere and to everyone.

Terry, after school today, we are having a Freedom meeting at Tabernacle.

I already know. I met this guy Bernard downtown. He told me. I am there. I am bringing everybody. Terry Shaw’s body is moving, jumping, hands gesturing, with enthusiastic joy. He is as excited and hungry for change as we are.

Chapter 3

March 1963: We Organize

If the first woman God ever made was

strong enough to turn the world upside

down all alone, these women together

ought to be able to turn it back, and

get it right side up again!

And now they are asking to do it,

the men better let them.

—Sojourner Truth

Colia Liddell LaFayette Clark

In just a day, the word freedom has spread like wildfire. The basement of Tabernacle is packed. Bernard and Colia are standing in the front to welcome us.

Colia leads off. While you can’t vote yet, you can teach and educate your parents to vote. The literacy test is difficult for most of the adults. You can help them prepare for that ridiculous, illegal test. Our lawyers in SNCC are working on outlawing that test. Of course, voting is power! He who votes controls the power of change. We will vote in Selma. But we will not stop with the vote. We will also integrate Selma. We will no longer live as second-class citizens. We have built America. We have a right to enjoy Freedom in America! We will take our freedom! She is speaking like a warrior goddess. We are spellbound.

First, and most importantly, we will take our freedom through love, song, and nonviolence. It will not be easy. We need you to come to these meetings, voter education meetings, as often as you can. Bring all the other students you know. I have passed around a sheet of paper for all of you to write down your addresses and phone numbers and write down one of the jobs or tasks you will be willing to do, such as typing, be a group leader, telephone committee, whatever you think you can do. The categories are listed on the sheets we are circulating. Bernard will now discuss with you the importance of organization.

Bernard takes over and explains the goal of the Voter Education Program. "I came here last year in November to determine if Selma is a place we can organize. My brothers and sisters in SNCC warned me against coming here. Too dangerous, they cautioned. Sheriff Jim Clark is a KKK member who will kill us if we come here. That is what we were told over and over again. Despite the warnings, I came in November and spoke with Mrs. Boynton, Mrs. Margaret Moore, and other community leaders. I was extremely impressed with the desire of the community leaders to advance the progress of the Negro Dallas County Voters League, which has been around for several years but has been unsuccessful in registering many black folks to vote. But I was most moved by Mrs. Boynton’s story about the importance of organizing.

"She told me the story of a slave who drove his master around in a fancy horse-drawn buggy. The Old Master, as the slave called him, was an expert with a bullwhip, frequently popping flies and bugs out of midair with one flick of his whip. As the slave drove Old Master around the countryside, he would delight in flicking bugs and flying creatures out of midair with his whip. One day, a hornet flew by the buggy. Old Master did not flick the whip. Baffled, the slave turned around and asked the Old Master, ‘Sir, why did you let him get away? Why didn’t you flick that hornet out of the air?’ Old Master responded, ‘Because they are organized!’"

As we all laugh, Bernard continues passionately, "That is why we must organize. If you hit one hornet, a whole swarm will attack you. We must organize so that when Sheriff Jim Clark arrests one of us, one hundred will fill the streets of Selma. If he arrests one hundred of us, one thousand will fill the streets of Selma. They won’t have enough jails to lock us all up. We will, like the hornets, organize!"

All the students jump to their feet in thunderous applause! And I realize that, overnight, my life has changed. I am ready to do anything to make this change happen—scared but ready.

"You are going to learn some freedom songs. You will learn how to carry out nonviolent demonstrations. And you should elect your leaders by consensus. Remember, Colia and I are here only to help you organize so you can lead yourselves. We are not your leaders. Let me say this again: Colia and I are not your leaders. You will elect your leaders, and you will lead your own movement—with or without Colia and me."

Wow! I am leaning over, whispering to Cleo. Are these people from Mars? Who are they? Thank God for them!

Cleo fervently agrees, This is our chance for freedom. We can and will do this!

Cleo, Terry, and I continue to urge every student at R. B. Hudson to go to the meetings at Tabernacle. We are spending all our free time at the Freedom House when we are not at school or working. Bernard and Colia read books we have never heard of, such as of Kwame Nkrumah, the first prime minister of Ghana, Marcus Garvey, and W. E. B. Du Bois, the first Negro to attend Harvard University. We are becoming more interested in reading their books than our class materials. We are obsessed with freedom. We talk to students and adults, but mostly to students. By the end of March, we have canvassed most of Selma. Cleo and Terry have been elected leaders and coordinators of the group leaders, Viola is on the typing committee, and I have been elected president. Every student who wants a part, a leadership position or a job, gets one. There are no competitive elections. Students volunteer, or someone suggests the person for a position, and by a show of hands, the positions are filled. By April, we are fully organized; the Selma Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Selma R. B. Hudson High SNCC is born. The movement is organized; it is incubating, developing, born, but not yet matured.

When are we going to engage in direct action, Bernard? Cleo, Terry, and I frequently ask this question, hungry for action and wildly impatient, pushing persistently. When are we going to go in the front door of the Wilby and the Walton Theaters? When are we going through the front door of Thirsty Boy rather than ringing that bell in the back to get a hamburger? The library is supported with our tax dollars but is for whites only. When are we going to tear down these walls of segregation?

We will engage in direct action when the time is ripe, when we are totally organized, when we are prepared to coordinate masses of students going to jail, when Atlanta SNCC tells us to go forward. We must continue with voter education and training in nonviolent civil disobedience. We don’t like it, but Bernard is our mentor; we trust his decision to wait.

After we have met for several nights, Bernard is instructing the group, I want you to quickly count off, one to four. We comply. Okay, all in group one stand here, pointing to his right. You are going to play the, well, the demonstrators. Group two, stand to my left. You all are the cops. Group three, you are hecklers, and you are also the white customers in Carter’s Drugstore. You are young, old, men, women, boys, and girls, and you hate niggers. And group four, you are the store clerks, the people working at the drugstore. And of course, all of you—pointing to groups two, three, and four—cops, clerks, and hecklers, well, y’all are white today. Muffled laughter rolls across the room.

"Okay, demonstrators, enter the drugstore, walk to the soda counter, and order something from the clerks, and no matter what happens, you must be nonviolent!"

The demonstrators hesitate, then, I would like a Coke, one says; and I would like a root beer float with strawberry ice cream, says another.

Bernard continues, Hecklers and clerks, tell these Negroes how you feel, yell at them, curse at them, push them, show your anger. The hecklers and clerks start yelling, pushing, screaming into the faces of the demonstrators.

Get out of here, niggers.

We don’t serve niggers in here.

Jungle bunnies, go back to Africa.

A melee erupts. Colia interjects, Cops, move in and arrest the demonstrators.

All right, you are under arrest for trespassing and disorderly conduct. Don’t y’all niggers see that White Only sign?

Colia orders, Demonstrators, go limp, fall down to the floor.

They comply while the cops are struggling to drag the limp demonstrators away to arrest them.

The practice is over. Colia asks us to share our feelings about the exercise, emphasizing that even though this is practice, this is also what happens in real demonstrations, during sit-ins; this is civil disobedience. The students who were demonstrators speak about feeling scared, angry, violent, wanting to hit back, curse back. They talk about feeling humiliated and powerless. One girl says, It felt like being raped by a mob of white folks. We repeat these nonviolent exercises day after day and week after week, wondering when we will get a chance to put into practice what we are learning. The emotions never seem to get easier, and our anger grows, but we are also learning more and more self-control. The more we go through these exercises, the more difficult it has become to walk past all the Colored and White signs everywhere in Selma. I notice every one of them now.

These signs will come down soon, I vow to myself every single time I see them, and I am seething with impatience.

The debutante ball practice is interfering with organizing the community. Viola has selected me as her debutante partner. We must go to dance practice, the waltz. The music is boring, the dance is stiff, but at least I get to hang out with Viola. Otherwise, my mind is at the Freedom House, the books I read when we are there. Talking with Colia and Bernard is the best education I have ever had. Certainly, we are learning more by hanging out and talking with them than we are learning at school. Our teachers are tiptoeing around the issue of the movement. We try to talk to them about the voter education program, but—with the exception of Mrs. Moore (English), Mr. Anderson (choir and Spanish), Reverend Reese (history), Mr. Flakes (history), and Coach Huggins—voter education is not a proper subject to bring up in class or to the teachers. As far as the principal, Mr. Yelder, is concerned, the movement is totally off-limits, a disciplinary offense.

Debutante Ball is fun. This is the very first time Cleo and I have dressed in a tuxedo, all black with white gloves. We take our role as escorts seriously. Viola and Roberta are graceful, wearing long white gowns, their shoulders bare, pearls shimmering around their necks, a frame for their happy smiles. Viola has told me that Delta Sigma Theta, a college sorority of women dedicated to public service, stresses the importance of education in eradicating discrimination. Delta offers a chance for selected girls to participate in the Debutante Ball. Young women, growing up in Selma with few opportunities of social activities, have competitions and are taught etiquette and how to waltz gracefully.

On the night of the ball, the debutantes are escorted by their fathers in tuxedos and joined by us, the escorts. This is a night for the girls to shine; and the girl who raises the most money for the scholarship program is crowned and receives a scholarship to further her education. We swing, step, and turn and waltz, perfectly in accord because we have practiced for weeks. Viola and I smile at each other as if we are dancing in a Hollywood movie. But every time the music stops for speeches by sorority women, Cleo and I engage Viola and Roberta in urgent conversation about canvassing the neighborhoods.

Cleo quietly recounts, We were walking in the George Washing Carver (GWC) Projects yesterday, trying to get these scared black folks to vote, and this old man, tall, face ashy, glasses cocked to the right side, slowly walks up to the door, and I said, ‘Sir, we want you to go downtown to the courthouse as soon as you can and register to vote.’ The old man looked at us, looked down at the leaflet I was handing him, and said, ‘Get the hell away from my house. Negroes don’t need to vote. Y’all better leave them white folks alone before they kill you.’ We all erupt in laughter, tinged with a little nervousness.

The next day, Cleo and I are in DO class, the Diversified Occupation class.

Mr. Harris, are you registered to vote? I ask boldly.

I am going to soon, Mr. Bonner, but Booker T. Washington said we Negroes must get a skill so we can work in our own community, create our own jobs. ‘The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows. It is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.’ Success, he said, ‘is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.’ That is why you, the students in this class, will be prepared to earn a living without white folks hiring you because when you finish this program in two years, you will have a skill. You, Mr. Bonner, will be able to open your own barbershop, Mr. Joe Arnold will be able to open his own construction company, Mr. Hobbs, his own electrician business. All of you will have skills to earn a living, support your families, and contribute to the economic development of Negroes.

"Yes, sir, but Mr. W. E. B. Du Bois said, ‘The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery.’ He also said, ‘The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.’ I have just read this in The Souls of Black Folk at Colia and Bernard’s Freedom House and am quoting with authority."

Yes, Mr. Bonner, replies Mr. Harris, but a skill, a good trade, is just as important as voting. A good education, a good skill, and voting, that is our ticket to freedom, Mr. Bonner. I stop arguing, but I don’t buy it.

*     *     *

FATHER OUELLET: One day after mass, I was approached by a young man, and Selma was racist and had been for a long time. One Sunday after mass, I was approached by a young man out in front of the church as I was saying goodbye to people, and he came and introduced himself and said, ‘I’ve been all over looking for places where we could meet,’ and I asked him who he was and then he told me he was with. His name was Bernard LaFayette. He was with SNCC, and he was here to try to organize a voter registration program. And he said, ‘Can we use a space that you have because I’ve gone throughout the community, and I can’t—nobody wants to give us space?’ And I said, well sure, we have a hall in the back, and you’re welcome to use that for whatever purpose you need.

Father Maurice F. Ouellet, Pastor of St. Elizabeth’s Mission And Superior of The Edmundite Mission House, And The Black Catholic Church, St. Elizabeth

Chapter 4

Wrestling With God

Everybody say yeah (yeah!)

Say yeah (yeah!)

Say yeah (yeah!)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

Just a little bit of sou-ou-ou-ou-oul

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Clap your hands just a little bit louder

Clap your hands just a little bit louder

—Stevie Wonder, Fingertips

I am at school, talking with Bettie Mae Fikes, and Evelyn Mann, who, like Roberta and Viola, are dressed alike, like twin sisters: tight white blouse and tight, cuffed blue jeans, white socks, and tennis shoes. Just as they are swishing around the corner of the hall, I see John Lewis Smith, tall Melvin Savage, Jimmy Reynolds, and Jesse Williams, prancing like soldiers of great fortune, in spit-shined black shoes, razor-sharp creased khaki slacks, and chest-exposing, lightly starched shirts.

Hey! Cleo yells gleefully. The Freedom Meeting. Canteen. Tonight!

John yells back, You know we are there!

Cleo leaves, heading to his DO electrician apprenticeship; I go off to Buster’s barbershop in a little alley off Washington Street, the Negroes’ Main Street. Eagerly I share the organizing talk with my trainers, Buster and Mr. Oliver, who are enthusiastic about The Movement that’s brewing. After cutting the hair of a couple of customers and sweeping the store, I cut out early to see my white boss, a different Mr. Oliver, the owner of the cleaning store. I am quitting today.

Charles, you be careful out there. I hear there are meetings going on and outside agitators in town, Mr. Oliver says with deep and sincere concern. I feel worried for your well-being. He is a kind, religious man, always wearing a tie hanging over his protruding stomach. Smoothing the three or four strands of black hair he has pulled across the top of his balding head, he says, You know that your grandmother, LB, is like a part of our family. Heck, she has spent more time with Mary Clara and her sister than their own mother. We could not have made if it hadn’t been for LB. He looks straight into my eyes, then upward as if to say, Thank God for LB.

"Are you reading those World Books I gave LB for y’all? I got the girls a brand-new set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and I thought the girls’ World Book would be great for you and Calvin. And better yet, are you reading the Bible?"

Instantly, I am thinking of Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, and all the new books I am devouring at the Freedom House, but I snap into my polite Sunday school manners. Yes, sir. The World Books. Calvin and I really like reading them. Thank you very much for those books. We pause. As I am climbing out of the green-and-white VW bus parked in front of the cleaners, I finally get the nerve and boldly ask, Mr. Oliver, why can’t Negroes vote? How is that fair? The constitution says we are all created equal. So why are Negroes not allowed to vote?

Everything is not right, Charles. God is judging us all. He made us all and he knows us all. White people know what is right and wrong. Negroes not voting, having no right to vote, that’s not right. That’s wrong. But these things take time, Charles. I am sorry you are quitting. You have been a good helper. Now don’t you get yourself in any mess, Charles. God is going to fix things. Leave it up to him.

Standing outside the VW van, the door still open, undelivered dry-cleaning hanging in the back, I express my gratitude, I will miss you too, Mr. Oliver. And thank you for two great years of working for you. I wouldn’t have had lunch money if it wasn’t for my job with you.

He smiles. Here, Charles, give the Quick Relief Pain Salve to LB. You know that is one of our best sellers. You and I have made as much money selling that salve and my tonic as we have made on dry-cleaning.

Thank you, sir. I will give it to Mama right now.

I run across Small Street and dash inside, set the salve on the mantel.

Charles, you just got here. Where in the world are you going now? Mama calls from the back room.

I am going to the SNCC meeting at the Catholic Canteen. There is some salve Mr. Oliver sent you on the mantel. Oh, I quit working for him today.

Boy, are you out of your mind? What are you going to do for money now? She is distraught and irate.

I’ll make money cutting hair, Mama. Gotta go now. I am running out the door, pondering, reflecting on Mr. Oliver’s words: God is going to fix things, eager to get to the meeting and joyful that Father Ouellet, the Catholic priest, has given us permission to hold a party (meeting) at the Canteen. We are going to discuss canvassing the neighborhood to teach the literacy test to Negroes.

Edgar Johnson

The Empty School Desk

I am fixing my plate. It’s quiet. Slow. Like many Sunday breakfasts, the smell of brown gravy bubbling in the big black iron skillet is igniting my hunger, exciting my thoughts of meeting Cleo and Edgar, as I am dressing up for church. The gravy is steaming on the white rice, adjacent to the green beans and carrots, the stewed corn, tomatoes, and okra, my absolute favorite. Just as I am sitting down, I’m hearing a woman’s piercing scream echoing through the back door of our two-room house. Then more wailing, moaning, crying, each louder than the one before, rising above the cedar trees. I am dashing out the back door, looking, searching for the location of this ear-shattering pain. There is an undertaker parked in front of Edgar’s house. His mother and two big sisters are fainting in howls of agony.

My boy, my boy!

Don’t let them take him away! Come back, Edgar!

I am gripped with the worst confusing fear ever. What’s wrong with Edgar? We plan to meet, like we do every evening, on the green tall grass in front of the red brick Catholic school and we’ll shadowbox, like the pictures in the comics books of Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger. Then I hear, He is dead! He is gone!

I am feeling sick. I can’t even call Cleo. I lie down, scared, choking, devastated, thinking, How can God let Edgar, my sixteen-year-old buddy, die?" Cleo and I are pallbearers at his funeral the next Sunday. The ladies are whispering, chattering.

Aint’ it a shame they wouldn’t keep him in Vaughan’s hospital? They sent him home. No beds for Negroes.

Lock bowel!

Lord ha’ mercy. This child gone died of constipation because they sent him home from the white hospital.

The women are shaking their heads, moaning in disgust. I am mad and I am hating even though Mama never lets me use the word hate.

The empty school desk just sits there. No one touches it. Every day. There is Edgar.

As I am passing by and looking into the candy factory’s big front window, I see reflections of me, talking to myself, God is going to fix things? He sure didn’t save Edgar. He sure didn’t fix things when I was on the mourners’ bench when I was nine and then ten and then eleven.

I get lost in my memories. Aunt Nell hasn’t let me off the Mourners’ Bench even though not once, not twice, but three times I’ve got the nerve up to stand and go sit in the distant, but very close, chair at the table for the saved ever since I was nine. The light from the kerosene lamps is shining dimly, flickering, dancing around the dark church, making the shadows of all the folks eerily long, like ghosts. I am kneeling on the front pew, long hard raw wood—the mourners’ bench; and I am getting up off my knees, rising up out of the dust that is billowing up from the wooden plank floor as folks—old folks, crippled folks, old men with potbellies, old fat women, uncles, daddies, and mommas—are shouting, yelling, hollering, and stomping with big farm boots and white high heels. They are all jumping and singing and shouting, taking turns praying over me: Save his soul, Lord. Don’t let him burn in the red-hot fire brimstones of hell, Lord! Each one is extending and repeating this burning-in-hell theme, and I am wondering what they all know about me that makes them think I’m such a sinner. I am feeling very bad and feeling very, very small, scared, and frightened about this flaming hell they are determined to send me to.

I don’t want to sit and sit and pray and pray all day, without play, under the big okra plant, with leaves so big they are my umbrella during the almost-daily rains. I must get religion this time so I won’t be kicked out of the Boy Scouts because I have not been baptized. I have prayed for God to fix it, for God’s sign, like seeing six white horses pulling a long black chariot, as I am told. ‘Such a God sign means you got religion! Your soul will be saved from hell!’ But I am not interested in signs, except for God to treat us all like his children, just like he treats his white children. That is the sign I want to see.

Thank God, Aunt Nell allows me to get baptized this time, the third time around. I walk up and sit in the chair underneath the pulpit now that I’m eleven even though I’ve never seen any sign. Aunt Nell must not ever know this, I am thinking as I am waiting to be carried down into the pond with all the church people standing along the water’s edge in their Sunday striped suits and big hats, some chewing tobacco, others dipping snuff and spitting along the banks of the big pond. "Am I going to be eaten by the alligators in the inky black water because I didn’t see a sign? Roosevelt, my closest friend in Orrville, seems nervous as well.

Walking down into the water in the long white gown Aunt Nell has sewn for me, I am feeling the cool water rising deeper around my feet, ankles, legs, and waist, and I wonder how much deeper the two deacons, each holding one of my arms, are going to take me in this big pond, with alligators, I am told. I am trying to look out for the alligators while they drag me deeper, and then they push my head under water, and I know I’m drowning for sure because I lied about seeing a sign. It’s probably only a few seconds, but it feels like I’m under that ink-dark water for about two weeks, and I can feel the alligators getting closer. I keep repeating quietly to myself: "Aunt Nell says, ‘God is everywhere—in all things, is all things. God is you, you are God, you and God are one! Don’t forget that, Charles.’ I am thinking that God hasn’t given me a sign, and God should have made me white and shouldn’t have given me this dark skin and this kinky hair, and then I wouldn’t always wonder why white people don’t like us because we have this dark skin. Why did God do that? I’m not sure God cares a thing about me, or he would have given me a sign and a life where I could go to Thirsty Boy through the front door. But then the deacons pull me up, and I am just happy that the alligators haven’t eaten me, and I can join the Boy Scouts now because I’m baptized.

But here I am now, whispering Aunt Nell’s words, just as I am passing Vivian Martin’s house next door to the canteen at Broad and Small Street, my street.

Hi, Vivian.

Hey, Charles, where is your cousin, little Bernice?

She is coming a little later, I respond.

Vivian is following behind me. I continue repeating Aunt Nell’s statements to myself as I am entering the canteen door for the meeting and party. I feel privately glad that I finally got off the mourners’ bench, but also still angry that God still has not fixed anything! I continue repeating, God is everywhere—in all things, is all things. God is you, you are God, you and God are one. I am God, God is me, God and I are one! I feel powerful!

Will God fix this injustice? I say angrily as I stride up determinedly to Viola, Roberta, and Cleo, standing along the white cinder block wall. Will black folks ever be able to vote, go in the front door of restaurants, hotels, libraries, and all public accommodations? Do you really believe it? This whole idea of us being able to change anything seems so farfetched. Since they haven’t heard my interior conversation, they just look at me in confusion.

Students from different grades are filing in, groups of two, three, some solo. All are looking curious, some a little afraid. This kind of student meeting is still very new to most of them. Colia asks Cleo and me to introduce her and Bernard. Cleo stands about five feet, eight inches, with strong, muscular arms, his color true to his nickname, Brownie. Sometimes he reminds me of a scrappy little rooster. He and I used to be the same height before I shot up to a skinny six feet. He starts, "Hey, everybody. Thanks for coming out. We are going to party in a little while. But before we start, for those of you who don’t know Colia and Bernard, they are field secretaries from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC. They are going to talk with us about freedom—our freedom. And what we need to do to get freedom. Charles and Terry are passing