Buses are a comin, p.9
Buses Are a Comin', page 9
Finally, Lonnie scheduled to meet with Chief Jenkins and the owner of Rich’s. This time instead of talking on the streets of Atlanta, they would converse in the Magnolia Room of Rich’s Department Store. Rich’s was the king of Atlanta stores; the Magnolia Room was the queen of the city’s banquet rooms. Look magazine had written that summer, “As goes Atlanta, so goes the South.”27 Lonnie’s thinking was “As Rich’s goes, so goes Atlanta.” If Rich’s would agree to desegregate, the battle would be won. His meeting with Chief Jenkins would be a first attempt at terms of segregation’s surrender. Lonnie tried to be seated in the Magnolia Room in an act of singular demonstration when he arrived at Rich’s. Rich’s closed the room instead of seating Lonnie. No protest could be made, no offense could be taken, if the room happened to be closed for the day.
Lonnie got hot about that. “Big Rich,” as the department store owner was known to the students, got hotter: “I’ve been the best business owner in Atlanta for Negro citizens. I’ve supported the AU Center. I was the first to ever put Mr. and Mrs. on the names of Negro customers when we send our bills out. I was the first one to give Negroes charge plates. You need to go back to class. Take your fellow students with you.”
“No,” Lonnie replied. “You need to change.”
“No. You need to leave. I’m going to lock you up and throw the keys away.”
“Mr. Richards, I will be back in the fall, and when I come back, I’m going to bring thousands with me.”28
Fall came. So did the thousands. I was one of them.
5
Man of Morehouse
We have pledged our lives to thee.
—Morehouse College hymn1
My college marching began the first day of fall semester, 1960. It was not in protest of anything. It was to get to Morehouse. I was not going to live on campus, so I would not be moving into Graves Hall, the oldest dormitory on campus. I would not be experiencing dorm life or making dorm friends for life. I would be walking three miles—Bradley Street to Edgewood Avenue to Hunter Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive) to Morehouse—and back. Living at home would save money and make college affordable, and walking would give me time to think. Two hours of extra thinking time each day. But it would also make me feel lonely and apart. I wanted to be a Man of Morehouse. Commuting to school made me feel more like a Man at Morehouse.
I remember wanting to dive into Morehouse waters to see if I belonged in a large pool of stronger swimmers than high school offered. Instead, I was a pedestrian treading my way there. My mom and siblings gave me a hug at the door of 21 Bradley and tried to let me know I’d be fine. Dad had long gone to work. On that first day’s walk, my mind shifted from excitement to anxiety, from confidence to questioning. When I arrived at Morehouse, it seemed as if most parents had accompanied their freshmen sons to school, moved them into Graves, and said their goodbyes with hugs and tears on campus.
I was so alone. Morehouse was so big. Tall brick buildings. Deep tradition. Hundreds of fellow freshmen. I looked up at the steeple of Graves Hall. I felt tiny. I looked down at Morehouse ground and felt unsteady. I looked around at all the other students and wondered, “Where do I fit? Do I fit?” It would have been nice to have Mom with me. Dad, too.
Dots are so much easier to connect from a distance of six decades. As I look back, a single bus ride to a bowling alley at twelve years old prepared me for bus rides to freedom at eighteen; a seat denied me at the Majestic in grammar school prepared me for seats that would be denied me in a few months at Sprayberry’s and Rich’s and Davison’s and Kessler’s in college; walking to an education at Morehouse prepared me for marching toward desegregation in Atlanta’s downtown when I would join the thousands that Lonnie would lead. In retrospect, the dots all connect.
But in the present, I was a typical, nervous freshman. Here was an institution committed to building men of strength and character. Morehouse looked me straight in the face and expected those qualities in me. Here was a call and a charge and a commitment to something beyond me. Here was Morehouse. I hoped I belonged. Arriving with three miles behind me to think about it, I wasn’t sure I did. What if I failed? How could I walk back home and tell my family?
“Mom, I’m not enough.”
“Papa, I don’t have what it takes.”
“Grandma, I don’t belong there.”
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
I had challenged myself in high school with preparation for my next steps in life, and this first morning of this first day, I was walking those steps. It was beautiful and exhilarating. It was terrifying. It was Morehouse.
Somewhere on campus, an unknown future friend and current student leader, Lonnie King, was planning events that would invite me in and challenge me in ways the Morehouse curriculum would not. That would challenge me to become a part of the thousands so that an irresistible force would hit an immovable object and prevail. That first day I did not see myself marching toward freedom; I saw myself competing against hundreds of bright kids from all over the country.
First-day testing, I discovered, would determine who would get first-tier professors. I had no idea what made a first-, second-, or third-tier instructor, but I knew what a first-string catcher was, so I wanted to be accepted to first. A reading test determined placement. I was slow, methodical, and deliberate in my reading because I was accustomed to reading scientific material. That took time, and this was a timed test. Slow, methodical, and deliberate landed me in Tier Two. It was Day One at Morehouse. I had already failed in my own expectations for myself.
Compulsory chapel five days a week at 8:00 A.M. introduced us to lecturers who challenged us to conduct ourselves in a Morehouse manner. I remember chapel as being more about building character than deepening faith.
In the classroom, Composition 101 challenged each of us to write like a Morehouse Man. In 1960, every freshman knew Martin Luther King, Jr., had been a Morehouse Man. Class of ’48. Everyone knew how Dr. King spoke and that his speaking came from his writing. Writing like Dr. King? Me? I did not think that was in me at all.
Like everyone else, I learned my way around campus and located the best places to eat lunch. The Atlanta University Center colleges—Morehouse, Clark, Spelman, Atlanta University, Morris Brown, and the Interdenominational Theological Center—were all within walking distance of each other, allowing students to mingle over food. Yates and Milton Drugstore, between Morehouse, Clark, and Spelman, back then had the best chili dogs, milkshakes, burgers, and fries. It also cooked up the best servings of student activism. By the fall of 1960, the tables were alive with students from all corners of AU Center. Many frequented Yates and Milton to plan strategies to be implemented first semester. The hunger they brought with them was not satisfied by anything on the menu. My first visits to Yates and Milton, all I wanted was a hamburger.
The more I hung out at Yates and Milton, the more I learned something was stirring. I heard stories of what had taken place during spring semester and summer months: the ides of March demonstration, the May 17 march, the pool hall confrontation. I began to read Julian’s Student Movement and You. I saw upperclassmen possess a vitality I did not have, but wanted.
As I heard specific complaints, my frustration with the status quo grew. My desire to join gained urgency. Yates and Milton rumblings of dissatisfaction awakened me more as students expressed infuriating anger over injustices that punctured their self-respect: a sign at the fairgrounds reading NIGGERS AND DOGS NOT ALLOWED with the signature of the mayor, William Hartsfield, below it; a policeman confronting a Morris Brown student, “Nigger, don’t you touch my car.”2 Nigger stories alone were sufficient cause for us to say, “Enough!” They felt like boils filling with pus. The upperclassmen wanted to lance the infection. They wanted to rid the face of Atlanta from the disgust they felt. Now, I did, too.
Their disgust would show itself in the new semester at the restaurants and theaters, the lunch counters and cash registers. The lance would be economic. They would drive a stake into the financial heart of the city. In the spring, they had taken to the streets and sidewalks to “do something.” In the fall, the inactivity of their wallets combined with the movement of their feet would make their voices blare and the system falter.
We freshmen heard, and we saw. But we were not invited in.
A big fall semester demonstration was being planned, and the leaders wanted experienced students, not newcomers, to handle the event. In early October, Lonnie and Julian called an assembly of upperclassmen who wanted to continue the spring demands. Students would conduct sit-ins and kneel-ins. The crowd was large and eager to start.
The date was set: October 19. Lonnie knew he had to raise the stakes or the fall effort would be a repeat of the spring, and nothing would change. To raise the stakes, Lonnie invited Martin Luther King, Jr., to join the marches. Dr. King was back in Atlanta from his six-year pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery and was serving as assistant pastor to his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was normal for Dr. King to encourage us in our efforts, but with his international fame, he had to measure with care the activism in which he would participate.
On Tuesday, October 18, Lonnie received word Dr. King would not be participating because he would be breaking probation from a traffic ticket. A traffic ticket? A follow-up offense to that small violation of the law could give authorities reason enough to put him in prison for years. That is how the politics of preserving Jim Crow worked in 1960.
Lonnie placed a call to Dr. King. He reminded ML—that’s what Lonnie called Dr. King—that Dr. King’s father had preached a sermon years earlier entitled “You Can’t Lead from the Back.” Lonnie pressed Dr. King to join AU Center students.
“Well, ML, you can’t lead from the back. You got to lead from the front.”
That pricked Dr. King’s conscience. “Well, LC”—Dr. King’s nickname for Lonnie C. King—“what time should I come tomorrow?”
“Ten o’clock on the bridge.”
“I’ll be there.”3
The next day the march, the pickets, the boycott, and the sit-ins came to Atlanta streets and businesses.
Students dressed in their Sunday finest—suits, ties, white shirts, dresses, scarves—to show the seriousness and the dignity the protest warranted. Placards as tall as dresses, long signs from shoulders to knees, made the demands known:
WE WANT TO SIT DOWN LIKE ANYONE ELSE
JIM CROW MUST GO!
DON’T SHOP HERE
EQUALITY NOW!
Upperclassmen marched two abreast, while we freshmen watched and learned. Dignity and discipline required. Eyes ahead. Calm demeanor. Courtesy. Respect. Determination. Keep marching forward. Forward.
At 10:00 A.M., Dr. King came. He and Lonnie marched side by side. They marched into Rich’s. The department store’s awning had a taut cloth banner with thick alternating red and white horizontal lines stretched across the marquee that identified Rich’s with large serif letters on the white field. Triangular red tassels with white balls at the ends hung from the bottom of the canopy and resembled inverted jokers’ hats. In 1960, it was an elegant look. Lonnie and Dr. King entered under the marquee and took the elevator up to the Magnolia Room, a dining room with white tablecloths, white china, white patrons, white everything. Negroes need not enter. Rich’s liked money even if it came from black hands. So, we could shop at Rich’s as long as we didn’t try on clothes, try to use the restroom, or try to eat.
When Lonnie and Dr. King invited themselves to the white opportunities at Rich’s, police arrested and jailed them. Then, in the middle of the night, they moved Dr. King from his cell. Alone. In the middle of the night. They said to Reidsville State Prison, two hundred miles away.
But who knew where they were really taking Dr. King? A drive—alone—in the middle of the night—sent terror through the Movement.
The solitary transfer of Dr. King to Reidsville in darkness for a possible four months of hard labor was a moment filled with such peril that presidential candidates—Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John Kennedy—were contacted to see if they might intervene. Only Kennedy’s campaign acted. Senator Kennedy called Mrs. King, who was pregnant with her and Martin’s third child, to console her, assure her he was thinking of their family, and let her know she could reach out to him if he could be of help.
That phone call—that one phone call of concern two weeks prior to the presidential election—turned the King family’s votes from Republican to Democrat, turned the city of Chicago for Kennedy, and in the view of many, turned one of the closest elections in US history in Kennedy’s favor.4 Such was the impact of Lonnie’s strategy to up the stakes in the battle for Atlanta.
October’s protest brought immediate compromise but not capitulation. Business leaders called for a monthlong truce to seek a solution to the conflict. Hope filled the air. We lived with a hope that society would come to its senses, but no solution came. The day after Thanksgiving with the start of the Christmas shopping season, the AU Center demonstrations resumed. Rich’s. Woolworth’s. Davison’s. H. L. Green’s. Rexall’s. McCrory’s. Kress. Newberry. All maintained segregation against us. All remained committed to discrimination. All stood in the crosshairs of our aim. But the student focus was on Rich’s. If we could break Rich’s, we thought, all the others would succumb. Sign after sign marched down Forsyth Street:
DON’T SHOP SEGREGATION
CAN’T EAT. DON’T BUY
DON’T BUY WHERE YOU CAN’T WORK
END LUNCH COUNTER DISCRIMINATION
WEAR OLD CLOTHES WITH NEW DIGNITY
Across the street from Rich’s, white robes, white hoods, white capes, and white crosses in black circles on the left chest marched against us. The Klan was not about to let this be a one-sided affair.
The Christmas boycotts brought decreased sales for Atlanta’s stores and increased tension in the city. And now, Lonnie, Julian, Herschelle Sullivan, and the rest of the leadership encouraged freshmen to get involved. I signed up. I showed up. Every day. Every event. Every rally. Some students were part-timers. Their hearts seemed to beat at a slow pulse for change. Others beat faster. My pulse bordered on a get-this-guy-to-the-hospital rate. I took the Atlanta Student Movement personally. I had applied to Georgia Tech and been denied for no legitimate reason. Papa had said, “Do something.” This was something I could do. I could see the purpose and effect of my movement in the Movement.
My “doing something” was more than the action of my feet and placing myself on lunch counter stools. It involved reading Gandhi’s thoughts on satyagraha (holding on to the truth of nonviolent resistance). It involved committing to our “Oath to Non-Violence” and acknowledging “non-violence does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship.”5 I vowed to direct my activism against the “forces of evil rather than against the persons who happen to be doing the evil.”6 Reading, discussing, committing, were all integral to our Atlanta Student Movement training and preparation for the struggle ahead.
And my “doing something” meant moving more toward the center of the action. At Yates and Milton, I shifted tables. Now I sat with upperclassman Frank Holloway and fellow freshman Leon Greene. What a contrast Frank was from me. He was six feet four inches and built like the football player he was. When Frank crossed his massive arms and looked down on five-foot-six-inch me, I felt menaced. His crossed arms and fists were about head level on me. I felt as if I should duck. And Frank was my friend. It made me wonder how his physical presence made strangers feel. Frank was someone I wanted to stand with, march with, and be with because he could knock anyone’s block off who would try to hurt me. That, in itself, was a crazy notion because we all committed ourselves to nonviolence. But the idea that he could defend me was reassuring.
Leon stood halfway between Frank and me in height. He was so different from Frank. Frank’s stoic, stern, serious exterior intimidated. Leon’s perpetual smile, jovial nature, constant laughter, and good humor invited. Frank scared me though his voice was marshmallow soft and his spirit as gentle as a rabbit’s fur. Leon made me chortle though his conviction was stone.
“Imagine what it’s going to be like when we can be clerks and tellers instead of janitors,” I remember Frank saying. He, like Mom, was always visualizing a future of possibility.
“Teller?” Leon replied. “That’s going to take more marching than we have years left in college.” And he laughed and shook his head at Frank’s lunacy.
“Then we better get marching,” Frank replied, his velvety voice quiet but resolute.
Frank, Leon, and I became known as “the guerrillas.” We liked the name because we felt it fit us—a group of unpredictable soldiers harassing the opposition with surprise raids. The three of us could close down any establishment. We would enter a lunch counter and plant ourselves on stools with seats in between us. No white wanted to sit next to a black, so our effort was more effective if we did not sit together. Sitting together would leave only two empty seats—one on either side of us. Spreading out, we could guarantee at least six empty stools.
Once seated, we would ignore any offense taken at our presence. We were determined. We were defiant. Most of all, we were steadfast. We. Would. Not. Be. Moved. Not by threat. Not by intimidation. That does not mean we sat in place till police dragged us from our stools. When we were ordered by officers to get up, we got up. It was important to be obedient to law enforcement. But it was as important to insist on service from the establishment and, like Rosa in 1955, stand up to the denial of our patronage by sitting down.
On one occasion, a manager approached and gave all three of us an opening line common in any establishment we tried to integrate: “You niggers best be moving on.”
