"THE BACKBONE OF THE BOYCOTT"

 “THE BACKBONE OF THE BOYCOTT”

On May 17, 1954, SCOTUS delivered a hard blow to the deep racist vein in American history, deciding in a unanimous decision that “separate but equal” was no longer constitutional.  Less than a week later, white mayor William “Tacky” Gayle of Montgomery, Alabama received a letter from the Women’s Political Council, a letter written and signed by Joann Robinson, who was president of the Council.  The letter demanded that the city stop the bus drivers from humiliating and harassing the Black passengers on the buses.  If no remedy was forthcoming, the letter indicated that a bus boycott would soon follow.  Mayor Gayle dismissed the demand, knowing that the Black people of Montgomery would not stand up to white power in such a way, SCOTUS or no SCOTUS.

Though the boycott would take a while to materialize, the mayor had badly miscalculated the level of determination of Joann Robinson and other Black women and men.  Robinson had been the youngest of 12 children born in rural Georgia, and she had gone on to be valedictorian of her high school class, get a college degree and a master’s degree.  After a teaching stint in Texas, she took a position on the faculty of Alabama State University in Montgomery.  She herself had been humiliated on a Montgomery city bus in 1949 because she refused to move to the Black section of the bus.  She vowed never to ride a segregated bus again, and she kept her vow.

She was a member of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr., would later become pastor.  She also joined the Women’s Political Council (WPC) founded as an activist Black women’s group by Mary Fair Burks.  She helped to turn it into a powerful political force, and she became its president in 1954.  In early 1955, she felt that the time for the bus boycott had come, when teenager Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the white section of the bus in March, 1955.   She and the women of the WPC went into action to get ready, getting fliers ready for distribution to the Black community.  Black male leaders like ED Nixon, however, did not think that Colvin was the right case, so Robinson held the fliers back.  On October 21, Mary Louise Smith was harassed on the bus for refusing to give up her seat in the white section.  Robinson was ready to go again, but again, the Black male leaders refused to endorse a boycott.

Robinson was now frustrated with both the Black male leadership and the intransigent white supremacy.  Then, the right person presented herself.  Spurred on by her work at Highlander Folk School the previous summer and by the blatant lynching of Emmett Till in late summer, on December 1, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the white section of the bus.  As the song by John Legend and Common put it, “Rosa sat down, and we stood up.”  One of those standing up was Joann Robinson.

This time she would not wait on the men.  She went to work the night of Rosa Parks’ arrest.  She consulted with attorney Fred Gray about taking action, and he urged her to do it.  She drafted a short statement for the WPC and a longer statement for wider public distribution.  She gathered women colleagues and students at Alabama State at about midnight to begin the arduous process of running off the flyers on the mimeograph machine. (Those of you in my age bracket will remember those things – necessary but messy!)  Here she was, sneaking into the building, using state facilities to reproduce fliers calling for the first step in a revolt against the white supremacist structures, supported and upheld by that very state system.  She took a deep breath – let the copying begin in the all night process.  They copied 35,000 fliers that night, and the WPC made sure that they were distributed on Friday to churches, schools, stores, beauty parlors, barbershops, and pool halls. They called for a Black boycott of the Montgomery city buses beginning that Monday, December 5.

Some of the Black ministers were distressed that the fliers showed up at their churches without their input or consent, but the word had been spoken, and there was no going back.  Would the boycott happen?  Would it last?  No Black people rode the buses on Monday, and the white community was shocked.  Robinson was at the center of organizing car pools, meals, money in order to sustain the boycott, which ended up lasting over a year, until SCOTUS ruled that segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional. That decision came in response to a suit filed by Fred Gray on behalf of Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, Mary Louise Smith, and Aurelia Browder in Browder v. Gayle.  No males stepped forward to join in the suit.

The Montgomery bus boycott was one of 4 actions in the 1950’s that led to the Civil Rights Movement.  At its backbone and its heart was a woman named Joann Robinson.  She would eventually lose her job over her leadership, and she had to leave the state of Alabama, moving to California, where she continued to teach and to work for justice.  She died in LA (that’s Los Angeles, not Lower Alabama) in 1992.  

If you don’t know her story, go learn about her – I’ve barely scratched the surface here.  And, let us find our paths in her story and in her witness.      

"OL' MAN RIVER"

 “OL’ MAN RIVER”

In a Facebook post on January 23, Philly Herlein Rains reposted a report celebrating the birthday of William Caesar Warfield, who was born in West Helena, Arkansas, in 1920.  I had forgotten that he was a Black “native son,” although I had been well aware of the most famous Black “Native Son,” Richard Wright, being from Elaine and West Helena.    

William Warfield was born to Baptist minister Robert Warfield and Bertha McCamery Warfield in West Helena in 1920.  Reverend Warfield had a “day” job as a sharecropper, a hard knock life.  Combined with the rampant white supremacy, the neo-slavery of the 20th century, and the murderous lynching of over 235 Black Americans in Elaine and in Helena in 1919, the Warfield family soon joined the Great Migration from the South, stopping first in Missouri, then landing in Rochester, New York.  Though William Warfield did not stay long in his birth state, he described himself “as an Arkansas boy from tip to toe.” He was plagued by white supremacy all his life, but his heritage was multiracial: Black, Native American, white.

In 1938 when he was a senior in high school, he won first place in the National Music Educators’ singing competition with his powerful bass-baritone voice. He won a scholarship to famed Eastman School of Music.  He was drafted into the army in 1942, but before his departure, he gave his graduation recital at Eastman School to an overflow crowd. Because he was fluent in German, French, and Italian, he was assigned to an intelligence gathering unit.  Fighting through the racism at Fort Richie, he became a valuable asset, and he was discharged in 1946.

He then began his singing career in a road show called “Call Me Mister.”  The cast included Carl Reiner, Buddy Hackett, and Bob Fosse. During this time, he appeared in other shows and operas, while receiving acting and singing training. He also sang in clubs, and on one such occasion in a Toronto, a financier named Walter Carr heard him and decided to sponsor him.  Warfield’s Town Hall debut in New York City was on March 19, 1950.  He wowed that audience and was signed for an extended tour of Australia.  He also made his first movie,  a remake of “Show Boat,” and he landed his signature song “Ol’ Man River,” originally sung by the incomparable Paul Robeson.  Though the song was written with Robeson in mind,  Warfield came to own it, singing it more times than any other artist, including singing it in several languages.   No small irony that it is a song about the Mississippi River near his birthplace, a river from which his family had to flee in order to find their lives and to develop Warfield’s singing voice.

In 1952, he toured Europe to sing the lead in “Porgy and Bess.”  The “Bess” role was sung by Leontyne Price, a stunning soprano from Laurel, Mississippi.  The fire in the parts spread to them personally – they were married that same year.  The marriage did not last long, and they were separated in 1958.  They remained lifelong friends, however.  In 1957, Price began her incredible career at the Metropolitan Opera, but Warfield could never break that ceiling because his racial classification was Black Male.  

He appeared in movies and television and made many recordings.  He worked with composer Aaron Copland on many occasions, and in 1984, he won a Grammy for his role as Narrator in Copeland’s “A Lincoln Portrait.” You can hear an audio recording of it at https://soundcloud.com/oaiquartz/copland-lincoln-portrait - it’s about 8 minutes into it, though the ‘Billy The Kid” suite that precedes it is good also. 

His career was varied and long and included teaching at Northwestern.  He was invited back to Helena/West Helena to sing at the Warfield Community Concert, named not for him but for a white man SD Warfield, who had left much of his estate to establish an annual concert series that was to be free to the community.  One can only wonder what his thoughts were, as he climbed the stage in the area from which his family had fled in 1922.  

In 1977 he established the William Warfield Scholarship Fund, providing funding for African-American high school and pre-college students interested in vocal classical music, and it is now in its 46th year of providing such scholarships.  Warfield died in Chicago in 2002 after brain injuries suffered from a fall, and his body is buried in Rochester, joining a sea of witnesses, including Susan B. Anthony and  Frederick Douglass, in Mt. Hope Cemetery there.  He described his career in these words:

“I wanted it all. I wanted “Show Boat” and “Porgy,” as well as Brahms and Fauré. I wanted the spirituals along with the boogie-woogie, and grand opera, too. I wanted the Hollywood film and I wanted the bistro gig, the international tour and the White House command performance. I wanted to teach music, to bring to a new generation the lessons of my life in art. I wanted to play a role in world culture–not just “Negro culture” not just “Western European culture.” I shared the dream of every artist, regardless of his or her origins, to find my patch in that great tapestry of art. If West Helena, Arkansas, wasn’t big enough for my sharecropper daddy, the East Coast cocktail lounge circuit wasn’t big enough for my career. I wanted all the wonders of music, a taste of everything that the muses had to offer.”

"THE ARC OF HISTORY IS LONG"

“THE ARC OF HISTORY IS LONG”

Septima Poinsette Clark was born on May 3, 1898, six months before the violent white coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, overthrown the democratically elected Black city government and established a reign of terror, which Clark and many others would have to combat in order to try to bend that arc of history towards justice.  She was born in Charleston, SC – her father had been enslaved, and her mom was from Haiti.  She came to believe in the power of education and in organizing against oppression, and for her efforts, she was often called the “Queen Mother” or the “Grandmother” of the Civil Rights Movement.

She began school at age 6 in a home school for Black kids, and later she went to a new Black school in Charleston for 6-8th graders, taught by all white teachers.  She graduated from high school in 1916, but there was no money for college, even though she was an excellent student.  She took the state exam to become a gteacher at age 18 and passed.  No Black teachers were allowed in Charleston, so she took a job teaching on John’s Island.  There she would begin a teaching career that lasted for the rest of her life, settling in Columbia, SC, where she got her college degree from Benedict College and a Master’s degree from Hampton University.  During this time, she spent summers at Atlanta University, studying with W.E.B. Dubois.

She also got actively involved with the NAACP, but in 1956 the state of South Carolina passed a law that banned city or state employees from being members of or having involvement with civil rights groups.  She was upfront in her refusal to to leave the NAACP, and she was fired from her job in the Charleston City Schools, effectively losing her 40 year pension.  A Black teachers’ sorority held a fundraiser for her, but no member would have their picture taken with her for fear that they would lose their own jobs.

This terrible set of events became a turning point for Clark.  She had been introduced to the Highlander Folk School in Knoxville, and had attended some workshops there.  In 1955, she helped to develop some “Citizenship Schools” in which participants were taught literacy as well as organizing techniques.  Because of her teaching experience and organizing ability, Clark became a leader in this development.  As Myles Horton, the founder of Highlander, put it, “we needed people to do real education with people who had been oppressed and mistreated.  Septima was a true leader for that.”  Highlander already was in trouble with the Tennessee state authorities because of their just8ce activities.  For the moment, however, Clark became the director of their Citizenship Schools, and she brought in her niece Bernice Robinson to develop the program.  In a compressed week’s workshop, they found that they could turn sharecroppers and other “uneducated” Black people into potential voters.

     In the summer of 1955, she became a mentor for a woman from Montgomery, who was interested in learning of more ways to resist the racial injustice of Alabama and to seek ways to change that injustice.  Rosa Parks was looking for ways to stand up when she came to Highlander that summer.  Septima Clark helped her to find her fire, and just a few months later, Parks would not stand up – she would remain seated and ignite a Civil Rights Revolution.

Highlander was closed by the state of Tennessee in 1961, after bogus hearings led by Bruce Bennett, attorney general of Arkansas.  (See Horton’s autobiography “The Long Haul” for that story).  Clark was hired at SCLC to found and expand the “Citizenship School” concept.  It took off all over the South, and it became a model for developing ways of resistance.  Like Ella Baker before her, however, Clark ran into the strong sexism of the Black male leaders of SCLC.  In spite of this. Clark was the first woman to gain a position on the SCLC Board.

She retired in 1970 from SCLC, and she was able to get her pension reinstated which had been denied to her in 1956.  She also served two terms on the Charleston County School Board.  She died in 1987, and at her funeral, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery gave her eulogy,  saying that her courageous and pioneering work made way for rights for Black people and for women.  One of her famous quotes described her ability to make a way out of no way:  “I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.” 

    She shook up the white South and got us moving – those same oppressive forces are rising again, so let us find our place in that chaos and do some bending towards justice.

 

"O, MEMPHIS"

 “O, MEMPHIS”

I was born in the Methodist Hospital in Memphis.  Even that many years ago, Memphis was the capital of three territories:  eastern Arkansas where I lived, north Mississippi where all my forebears are from, and western Tennessee where Caroline’s dad grew up.  Though I lived in Arkansas, Memphis was the city to which all the small town people in the three territories related, including me and my family.  My mother’s brother, Bud Armour, lived in Memphis before he and his family moved to Chicago – part of the Great Migration in a different way. My mother’s other closest relative, Bernice Armour, lived in Memphis, and we often went up to see “BB,” as she was called. As a kid, Memphis had a magical, urban quality to it – I loved going there.

I went to college in Memphis at what was then Southwestern at Memphis, now Rhodes College.  I had just ended working my shift in the college library in the spring of 1968, when I heard that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot and killed not far away at the Lorraine Motel, where he was headquartered to organize a second march in support of the sanitation workers there.

When I heard that Tyre Nichols had been beaten and killed by police officers in Memphis, I was not greatly surprised, but I felt a tug at my heart for my relationship to Memphis.  I was reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 23 on the outskirts of Jerusalem, as he got ready to enter that city: “ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

I’m not Jesus, and Memphis is not Jerusalem, but I had some of this same sense for Memphis when I heard about the police murder of Tyre Nichols.  I’m not sure why that feeling of affection had not left me, but it was there.  I haven’t been back to Memphis much since my mother died in Arkansas in 2004.  Memphis has a horrible history of white supremacist murders of Black people.  It led the white, Southern defense of neo-slavery in 1866 with the “Memphis Massacre,” in which white people killed at least 46 Black people and burned homes and churches and businesses to the ground.  On The Curve, in 1892, white people murdered Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell, and William Stewart - all because they dared to open a Black grocery store in a Black neighborhood.  

    One of Tom Moss’s friends, Ida B. Wells, wrote the truth about his lynching, and her newspaper offices were burned in response.  A price was put on her head, and she became an exile, not returning South again for 30 years.  She came then to investigate one of the worst mass murders of African-Americans in American history – it happened in my home county of Phillips County in the Elaine Massacre. She rarely returned to Memphis after she left in 1892.  

    One of the great American prophets, Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed there in 1968.  Many others have been lynched or run out of Memphis.  Still, it hurt my heart that my “home” city of Memphis was the site of such police brutality on a Black man.  And, yes, I know that it is a horrible and yet standard practice in Memphis and around the country for Black men to be targeted in this way.  

    I’m reading a fascinating book now about the white resistance to powers that would seek to curtail the white ability to dominate and brutalize people classified as “non-white.”  In this book, “Freedom’s Dominion” by Jefferson Cowie, the obstacle to white domination is federal power.  As the subtitle says, it is “a saga of white resistance to federal power,” and Cowie has so far done an impressive job of tying the slaughter and removal of Indigenous People with the slaughter and enslavement of African-American people.  The killing of Tyre Nichols reminds us that this powerful white supremacy is not only internalized by those classified as “white,” but also by those classified as “Black.”  In fact, white supremacy works best when those classified as “colored,” come to believe that it is true.  It is why Ron DiSantis opposes the teaching of Black History in Florida – to do so would be to shed light on the fact that the white supremacist narrative is not true at all.

    “O Memphis” – a lament about the continuing power of white supremacy. It is  a clarion call for us to continue to work so that a different narrative can take hold, a narrative that proclaims that the system of race is a lie, that white supremacy is a lie, even as its power continues to grow.  A narrative that proclaims that we are siblings after all, that humanity is not a hierarchy of races but rather a family of those who are made in God’s image, each of us and all of us.