Interviewing people on the train ride to Washington, D.C., going to the civil rights March on Washington

Studs Terkel As our annual remembrance commemoration of the train ride from Chicago to Washington, late August 1963 And that's when this program was first broadcast in 1963. This train Commemorating the March on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King.

Big Bill Broonzy This train is bound for glory. This train, this train is bound for glory. This train, this train bound for glory, nobody right but the Rogers. This train is bound for glory. A this train! This train is bound for glory. Now, this train, this train is bound for glory. This train,

Studs Terkel This train bound for Washington, Wednesday, 28, 1963, 803 passengers. Here are some of their words, thoughts and dreams.

Female Voice 1 Well, it appeals to me that we are going somewhere, get something on the train and this train means a whole lot. If you're going to get something good.

Studs Terkel At the B and O Depot Chicago, 3:30 Tuesday afternoon just before departure.

Male Voice 1 But I I placed importance on this train simply because it represents so much.

Male Voice 2 It means an opportunity to earn a living in my country.

Female Voice 2 Well, to me, it means that my relatives and people who aren't related to me after I'm gone or while I'm still here, will have a better future and more secure life than what I've had.

Male Voice 3 While going back to childhood when I used to travel from mid north Dakota to mid Canada in Fitzroy Harbor Ontario every summer. It meant going places. It was a means whereby you got from one place to another and you went from toward a goal and you arrived at a goal. That's what a train meant to me a in a sense to going home.

Studs Terkel Train.

Female Voice 3 Well a train means moving on, moving forward. But one day all of us will be dead. But after we're gone, there will be these millions of little children who are being Success is a cinch

Male Voice 4 deprived Success is a cinch by the inch. It's just hard by the yard.

Male Voice 5 The train is the movement, it's it's the movement of one person or people from one place to another. It's dynamic, it's forceful. It always has a certain destination, it always reaches a certain point. And I hope this train is going to reach freedom.

Studs Terkel Etta Moten, as we here this, the wheel is going east, heading towards Washington. What are your feelings?

Etta Moten As I've been sitting here, Studs, listening to their music of the wheels on this train. I'm reminded of an old spiritual that I used to hear my grandmother sing really and they sang in church and you know, I have come along, Studs when it wasn't a shame to sing the spirituals. I came along when you were obligated to sing the songs of your people if you were an artist and I'm thinking about this one says, [singing] this train is bound for glory. This train, This train is bound for glory. This train, this train is bound for glory. When I get there, I'm going to tell my story, this train, this and this is going to Washington and I hope that these leaders of ours when they get up to the White House will really tell our story.

Studs Terkel You have ridden trains many times, Etta

Etta Moten Yes.

Studs Terkel haven't you?

Etta Moten Yes

Studs Terkel The train itself, the train. What's that mean to you?

Etta Moten It- as I look out this window and look at these steel mills and the ribbons of railway going along there next to us and see that great oil industry and see the great smokestacks over there and realize that underneath those and over behind that barbed wire and over behind those, that's Standard Oil for example, that we're passing there behind that are human beings. Behind that are people. Behind that are jobs for people. Some jobs for some people, some people may and some people may not. I'm hoping that when this train passes here again, that there will be more of an opportunity for people, all people to have jobs beyond that coal pile over there. That beyond those menial menial menial jobs over there and can help to direct some of the things that are going over there in that industrial mess, this is what I hope, and this is what this train means to me.

Studs Terkel Again the wheels move around and around toward the capital from Chicago on to Baltimore and Ohio, this train. Dr. Howard Schomer, President of the Chicago Theological Seminary, you a white Minister, why are you on this train? What does this train mean to you Dr.

Dr. Howard Schomer It's a return engagement with people who founded our seminary 100 years ago who are the same people who founded the Underground Railway station for fugitive slaves. The Ashland-Washington Boulevard section and the leading spirit amongst them called for the first mass rally in Chicago in favor of an emancipation proclamation by Mr Lincoln. Dr. Patton led a group of clergymen all white at that point, this battle from Chicago to the White House just 100 years ago. And it was after this interview with the president that Joseph Medill received a word from the Secretary of State that the Chicago clergyman had convinced President Lincoln that the time was right for an emancipation proclamation. I'm glad now that the Negro people are speaking for themselves and proud simply to walk with them tomorrow to ask for the fulfillment of the promise inherent in that emancipation of 100 years ago.

Studs Terkel A dream more than a century old there was a clergyman one century ago, a Reverend Theodore Parker up in Boston who was an abolitionist.

Dr. Howard Schomer That's right, Parker in Boston, like Patton in Chicago and others to be named all over the north. And a few prophetic spirits in the south have been calling for this day and we cannot be absent as masses of our Negro fellow citizens and many Christian brethren march tomorrow.

Studs Terkel As you and I at this moment, passengers car one of this train hear those wheels, you you mention the underground railway. The train itself. The train always has been a symbol has it not, of Negro liberation?

Female Voice 3 The train always means you're going you're going somewhere and you're coming from something. But somehow, a train always takes on an importance of its own. It has a personality of its own. It says something all by yourself, all by itself and when you're on it, you sometimes have thoughts and ideas and perhaps dreams that you don't have at the place where you took off with or the place where you're going.

Studs Terkel What are some of the dreams?

Female Voice 3 Well, this particular train has a very special dream I think. It is in fact a freedom train and the dream is that somehow the fact of this train is going to mean more freedom for more people, a better life in a much better America. I feel that I'm taking part in a great historical event and I'm very, very happy, extremely happy.

Big Bill Broonzy This train don't care whether you're white or black on this train. This train don't carry water black. Everybody rides,

Female Voice 4 And you can remember little babies, little fat babies and that toddle over to you and want to be friendly, you know, and how you get to know their parents and that the mother or the grandmother, whoever it is. And other little babies come over and bring you a piece of her her chicken, a piece of her sandwich where we'd have to eat in this Jim Crow car, you know. And it it's just a lot of warmth. A lot of warmth is found on the train.

Youth Voice 1 I like -you you don't have to stand, you can sit on chairs, you don't have to un you could sleep here. It's just like home. Yeah, and you can put yours stuff, you don't have to put it on the ground. Um um you could put your feet on the ground and and you can put the your stuff up there's. So you won't be in your way when you put your feet on the ground.

Studs Terkel Anything else?

Youth Voice 1 No.

Studs Terkel Gettin' ready to eat pretty soon. Huh?

Youth Voice 1 When?

Studs Terkel [laughter] You hungry? Pretty soon I think. There's the call. What do you see outside through the window?

Youth Voice 1 Cows, pigs, farms, houses, cars and trees. Grass, flowers and choo choo tracks and water. And um people and I and I could see houses in the backyard and I could see um all different kinds of flowers and signs. And I could see gates. And I could see and um we could see weeds,

Studs Terkel You you know why your mother and you are on this? Why you're going to Washington? You know why?

Youth Voice 1 Why is she going to Washington with me?

Studs Terkel Yeah

Youth Voice 1 Because she might get lost.

Male Voice 6 I um I ask myself the question, what happens to this Negro boy girl or this child of a minority group that causes him to lose himself along the way, even when he seems to have the ability. Um why is it that some young people seem so poorly adjusted to the environment in which they find themselves? Is it the environment or is it the young person? Is it something which is inherent in both of these? Why is it that most of these youngsters seem to come from one group rather than other groups. In my own experience, these youngsters that I happened to be in contact with and who seem to give the most trouble to themselves into the community were Negroes. Being a Negro it was very difficult for me to feel that inherently a Negro was a troublesome figure and I decided that the answer was not one which was easily come by. That it would have to be sought out in both the way in which a child developed his inheritance and the environment in which he had the opportunity to develop that which he inherited from his parents. Again, I was puzzled and I wanted to seek the answers. I haven't found all of them yet. Still looking for them. But these were interesting questions to me because it seemed to me ridiculous to accept a proposition that might be offered that a boy or girl inherited bad or good treats and that once inherited these things could not be modified and even changed. So I decided the field of education was one way in which we could begin to develop some inquiry into these. What I consider very crucial matters and in not only American life but in world life today. Because we know the American problem is a human problem. Unless we solve that problem, we are in trouble.

Female Voice 5 You live in the south and you grow up under certain situations. You are protected in certain fashions. I know my aunt that I lived with because my mother died when I was very small and my father also died protected us from a lot of of well just a matter of buying a pair of shoes. Instead of going downtown deliberate to buy the shoes. She used to bring things home in what they called approval. And I thought that we were a little bit more well to do than we were and we weren't. I thought that we had unlimited credit. But then as I as I became an adult, I found out that the things that she did was a matter of protection against the Jim Crow laws that existed even in terms of shopping.

Studs Terkel Didn't want to, you mean your aunt did this so as to protect you from hurt?

Female Voice 5 From the hurt that could come from this kind of thing. And it was during the war when I was trying to get from Atlanta, Georgia to a very small town in Georgia called Cedartown, Georgia and my sister who was working at Tuskegee at the Air Force base there met me in Atlanta to go for this particular weekend and we missed the train and had to take a bus or decide not to go. And we attempted to use the bus and we were told that there were no more colored. When the when the bus had not been filled up yet we had bought the ticket. And those circumstances in which you feel that you just can't tolerate. And I lived in Birmingham, Alabama for a a few years in terms of working as an adult and public transportation was quite a hard thing to take because you could go out to work and you were getting the bus at the same point that other whites were getting the bus because the neighborhood aren't that divided, they're fringe, and the bus driver could say 'No more colored.' yet that he would take on three or four or five of more persons and of course it meant that you had to wait 10 or 15 minutes for another bus to come or either you suffered to go by taxi, which is quite expensive and it's a matter of living in cities in which you find that the greatest hardship has been, now of course, I understand. I'm not white washing any situation that comes from havin' lived in a small southern rural town. But I think that you really become aware of what the whole circumstances are about when you attempt to go out to work and you attempt to live and you you think you are a decent human being and you're just about as moral as most as most people are.

Male Voice 7 In Georgia I had to walk 20 miles to school when there was a white school only two blocks away.

Male Voice 7 I wouldn't know because I've never been in.

Male Voice 29 Does damage to a person's personality when he has to at every crook and turn be on the alert as to what he should do next. Whether he's doing the right thing or the wrong when other people are doing pretty nearly as they please. This is confusing and and damaging and it does something to the person that makes them very mad. They become become angry and some people strike out.

Female Voice 6 It's just such a deep feeling inside of me I can't even explain it. It's just it it almost brings out the fact that if I put myself in this place, how how how bitter I would be. But this is what I seem to do. I put myself in the place of these people. People that I've talked to on this trip have a marvelous outlook. I would say that they feel that this is a breakthrough, a real breakthrough which might mean the kind of emancipation that they've been looking for. The older women at times are more bitter, because I think they've been hurt a lot more. They've been restricted much more than the young. The young is still very flexible, but the old folk, it hits hard and they they become hard in the face and and hard in the soul and it'll take quite a bit to erase these years of struggle and trying to succeed and never being successful.

Female Voice 7 But I've seen so many unfair things happen to my people, unfair things happening to me that I could never say that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. It's land of prejudice, hatred, overriding a minority group. That's what it is and that's what it spells to me. I get so mad when I think about it.

Studs Terkel What was your feeling? Lonliness?

Female Voice 8 No. I thought I was white. I did really though- think I was white. But I wasn't happy. I never had a friend. If you graduate, they go their way and I come back to my little neighborhood and then I had no friends because I didn't go to school with other colored children, see. I had to make friends in high school and that was a white high school with about 15 Negroes, 800 enrollment, and about 15 Negroes there, but the few that were there, we were friendly to each other and those are my first coloured friends. I was 14 then, but I never knew how to mix good with my own people and I was always backwards where they were concerned because I have a feeling, a strangeness with them. I have never been with colored children. I don't like all colored schools and I don't like all white schools. I like a mixutre. That you can pick your friends if you want to be friends with the white kids and they like you, fine. If prefer your own people, which I definitely did, I could have had friends. My people were a prejudice sort of a family clannish. Um They seem to think that because a Negro was poor, was deprived and oft times didn't look so good. They led us to believe that we were better

Studs Terkel Cause you were light skinned?

Female Voice 8 Yes, we were better. Took me a long time to I wake up. I guess I was 15 before I began to look at the lovely colored children that I hardly knew and how much they enjoyed each other. And then I began to turn around, see. I wanted my own people. But that little town in Indiana where we were born there were colored and white of course and integrated housing. There was no colored streets, no colored neighborhoods. We lived in the house and across the street the people were white. On next door on either side, they were white. Further down there was another color family. But there wasn't this segregation and just planned segregation. Like Chicago has. Chicago is rotten. Don't get me started Chicago's leadership is rotten. It's all of them. No good. Poor leadership. I have the Electrical Unions. We don't accept color. the plumbers Union. We don't accept color. The glazers, we don't accept color. I get so. We don't accept oh. First place in America was right. The Board of Education couldn't hire 'em if they weren- if they have that bias clause see. If there's any bias clause and then they don't get the big contracts from the cities, the states, the federal. You can't have it, the county. You can't have them. But those contracts go out year after year for all of these people. The bids go out there accepted none of them. Then you're talking about the colored boys on dope. They use narcotics. Damn right. They use them they try to lose themselves, forget that they are part of this vicious society that they live in. Yeah. They could wipe it out if they want to. But as long as it's a problem of the Negro and they're doing it only to the Negro side. But they're so smart. And yet they're crazy. Nothing ever touches the Negro alone. Because my child uses for narcotics. Maybe your child is not gonna to use it, but your neighbor's child is using it too. Took a namby shandy attitude because they were just peddling it there on the south side didn't make any difference, nothin' but colored children. I'm telling you. They got a lot to answer for and all these crooks in Chicago better pray. There is no heaven and hell, because I'm telling you.

Studs Terkel We just passed or passing through Indiana. You said you're Indiana and integrated housing where you were.

Female Voice 8 Yes. And that was how many years ago, 50 years ago

Studs Terkel Indiana?

Female Voice 8 Jeffersonville, Indiana and that was southern Indiana. But there were no Negro ghettos there. I was five years old. I don't know too much about it, but I know that there was no Negro neighborhoods in that little town. And the whole town was prejudiced too. But we all lived together.

Studs Terkel It was about 15- you were about 15 though when you made the discovery?

Female Voice 8 Yes.

Studs Terkel How do you feel now on this train, 1963 about being Negro?

Female Voice 8 I feel wonderful. I don't believe in the bible a lot, but I believe one thing that everything that's going on is a part of the creation. Everything has a purpose. There's nothing the white man can do to stop it. That's the way I feel about it.

Studs Terkel You're a religous woman?

Female Voice 8 No. I gave up religion a long time ago, Martin Luther King is my love and my religion.

Studs Terkel He's a religious man.

Female Voice 8 He's mine. He's my man, my choice for leadership. I don't I don't go- he's not a fanatic. I'm not against religion, I'm against the ignorance and what it's done for the colored people of the south. These northern and these colored children that are coming along now they have religion, but they have it in his place. They have God, they have him in his place. They don't go and tell all these lies, pretend that God is so good. White colored man sings those songs, Jesus is good to me. He is my friend. I say if Jesus is a Negro's friend God doggit I hate to see his animal. [laughter] If God is what the Negro says he is and what man says he is, the only thing he'd have to do is to lift his finger instead of being so much hatred in the world, there could be just this much love. Do you think he'd lift it? No, he wants us to fight, He wants us to be ugly. He wants us to call each other names. I don't understand this-

Studs Terkel Yet Martin Luther King calls upon him.

Female Voice 8 huh?

Studs Terkel -concepts of jesus. Martin Luther King

Female Voice 8 Concepts of Jesus. He talks all right about Jesus. He accepts him because he is a man of cloth and I think he is really sincere. But as I said about it, he says time and time again, God helps you if you help yourself.

Studs Terkel Do you believe in heaven or hell?

Female Voice 8 No. I don't believe in heaven or hell. I think death is eternal rest. Heaven and hell is right here on earth. And I don't look forward to go into a new life because I don't want to go into a new world and have to start this fight all over again. They had one war and held you know, a long time ago when Jesus cast, Satan, was he Lucifer then, wasn't he? And cast him in hell and made him satan. Well that was trouble up there and they thought it was trouble. But you get all of us up there together, that's on this earth. You're gonna see some trouble. I'd rather be right there in the ground.

Studs Terkel You don't think you don't heaven is going to be integrated.

Female Voice 8 [laughter] Not if this white man can help it. No. The white man really intruded. He felt that he was going to have to sit besides some colored man and having all of his life eternity. I mean not life eternity. I think you'd rather go to hell.

Studs Terkel How do you feel about the young white boys and girls on this train?

Female Voice 8 I think they are wonderful. I think if every white man in America could get on this train and see the good fellowship. He had either have a stroke or he might have a change of heart. But I have a soft feeling for all young people. All youth, there is hopes there in them. But these dies in the wool no good gray white men that think they are so great and God's gift to the world. I got news for 'em. They are, you know, to me.

Studs Terkel You do have faith in the future, then. You spoke of the young people and you do despite what you said, you have faith.

Female Voice 8 Oh I not only have faith and hope. I have knowledge. I know this is going to be all right someday. I know it.

Studs Terkel With the march perhaps, and?

Female Voice 8 That's still not enough. When you come home from Washington, are you going to be satisfied? These white folks asking colored people that question. Are you going to keep on fighting? We're going to keep on fighting. I got news for 'em honey. Only thing I'm sorry for that I'm not 20 years younger. We have love. The white man doesn't know the love that's in a Negros heart. Too much love. That's why we've gone along with crazy American pattern for so many years, but I know one thing that's over. [laughter] I feel good. I feel good riding. And I don't care how tired I get. I'm going to work Friday and I'm going to feel rested because this is something that is really worthwhile and I don't mind staying up a couple of nights and this is something I never do. I go to bed at 10:00 every night. But I want to see this and I'm not going to try to sleep. I want to be a part of all of it. Because tt's really something and I'm just sorry that I didn't bring one of my grandchildren with me. I would have had company and then they would have been a part of something too. I'll show you-

Studs Terkel You will have a lot to tell them when you return.

Female Voice 8 Yes I will and they're anxiously waiting. They didn't want me to go, they think I am too old to go. Grandmother, what are you going for? I said I'm going because I want to be a part of the freedom rally and march. Oh grandmother, you're too old for that. I says you're never too old to be free and I don't want you to say that and I'm going for you. I was going to show you a picture of my, one of my grandso- He put this in my wallet when I was leaving he said, in case you get lonesome grandmother I want you to look at me. So I told him I said, well I will and I hope I did bring it now.

Studs Terkel These are pictures of your grandchildren,

Female Voice 8 I

Studs Terkel As as you're looking, oh very handsome, boy

Female Voice 8 Yes

Studs Terkel Very handsome.

Female Voice 8 He's 10

Studs Terkel How old is he?

Female Voice 8

Studs Terkel As our annual remembrance commemoration of the train ride from Chicago to Washington, late August 1963 And that's when this program was first broadcast in 1963. This train Commemorating the March on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King. This train is bound for glory. This train, this train is bound for glory. This train, this train bound for glory, nobody right but the Rogers. This train is bound for glory. A this train! This train is bound for glory. Now, this train, this train is bound for glory. This train, This train bound for Washington, Wednesday, 28, 1963, 803 passengers. Here are some of their words, thoughts and dreams. Well, it appeals to me that we are going somewhere, get something on the train and this train means a whole lot. If you're going to get something good. At the B and O Depot Chicago, 3:30 Tuesday afternoon just before departure. But I I placed importance on this train simply because it represents so much. It means an opportunity to earn a living in my country. Well, to me, it means that my relatives and people who aren't related to me after I'm gone or while I'm still here, will have a better future and more secure life than what I've had. While going back to childhood when I used to travel from mid north Dakota to mid Canada in Fitzroy Harbor Ontario every summer. It meant going places. It was a means whereby you got from one place to another and you went from toward a goal and you arrived at a goal. That's what a train meant to me a in a sense to going home. Train. Well a train means moving on, moving forward. But one day all of us will be dead. But after we're gone, there will be these millions of little children who are being deprived Success is a cinch by the inch. It's just hard by the yard. The train is the movement, it's it's the movement of one person or people from one place to another. It's dynamic, it's forceful. It always has a certain destination, it always reaches a certain point. And I hope this train is going to reach freedom. Etta Moten, as we here this, the wheel is going east, heading towards Washington. What are your feelings? As I've been sitting here, Studs, listening to their music of the wheels on this train. I'm reminded of an old spiritual that I used to hear my grandmother sing really and they sang in church and you know, I have come along, Studs when it wasn't a shame to sing the spirituals. I came along when you were obligated to sing the songs of your people if you were an artist and I'm thinking about this one says, [singing] this train is bound for glory. This train, This train is bound for glory. This train, this train is bound for glory. When I get there, I'm going to tell my story, this train, this and this is going to Washington and I hope that these leaders of ours when they get up to the White House will really tell our story. You have ridden trains many times, Etta Yes. haven't you? Yes The train itself, the train. What's that mean to you? The It- as I look out this window and look at these steel mills and the ribbons of railway going along there next to us and see that great oil industry and see the great smokestacks over there and realize that underneath those and over behind that barbed wire and over behind those, that's Standard Oil for example, that we're passing there behind that are human beings. Behind that are people. Behind that are jobs for people. Some jobs for some people, some people may and some people may not. I'm hoping that when this train passes here again, that there will be more of an opportunity for people, all people to have jobs beyond that coal pile over there. That beyond those menial menial menial jobs over there and can help to direct some of the things that are going over there in that industrial mess, this is what I hope, and this is what this train means to me. Again the wheels move around and around toward the capital from Chicago on to Baltimore and Ohio, this train. Dr. Howard Schomer, President of the Chicago Theological Seminary, you a white Minister, why are you on this train? What does this train mean to you Dr. Schomer? It's a return engagement with people who founded our seminary 100 years ago who are the same people who founded the Underground Railway station for fugitive slaves. The Ashland-Washington Boulevard section and the leading spirit amongst them called for the first mass rally in Chicago in favor of an emancipation proclamation by Mr Lincoln. Dr. Patton led a group of clergymen all white at that point, this battle from Chicago to the White House just 100 years ago. And it was after this interview with the president that Joseph Medill received a word from the Secretary of State that the Chicago clergyman had convinced President Lincoln that the time was right for an emancipation proclamation. I'm glad now that the Negro people are speaking for themselves and proud simply to walk with them tomorrow to ask for the fulfillment of the promise inherent in that emancipation of 100 years ago. A dream more than a century old there was a clergyman one century ago, a Reverend Theodore Parker up in Boston who was an abolitionist. That's right, Parker in Boston, like Patton in Chicago and others to be named all over the north. And a few prophetic spirits in the south have been calling for this day and we cannot be absent as masses of our Negro fellow citizens and many Christian brethren march tomorrow. As you and I at this moment, passengers car one of this train hear those wheels, you you mention the underground railway. The train itself. The train always has been a symbol has it not, of Negro liberation? The train always means you're going you're going somewhere and you're coming from something. But somehow, a train always takes on an importance of its own. It has a personality of its own. It says something all by yourself, all by itself and when you're on it, you sometimes have thoughts and ideas and perhaps dreams that you don't have at the place where you took off with or the place where you're going. What are some of the dreams? Well, this particular train has a very special dream I think. It is in fact a freedom train and the dream is that somehow the fact of this train is going to mean more freedom for more people, a better life in a much better America. I feel that I'm taking part in a great historical event and I'm very, very happy, extremely happy. This train don't care whether you're white or black on this train. This train don't carry water black. Everybody rides, And you can remember little babies, little fat babies and that toddle over to you and want to be friendly, you know, and how you get to know their parents and that the mother or the grandmother, whoever it is. And other little babies come over and bring you a piece of her her chicken, a piece of her sandwich where we'd have to eat in this Jim Crow car, you know. And it it's just a lot of warmth. A lot of warmth is found on the train. I like -you you don't have to stand, you can sit on chairs, you don't have to un you could sleep here. It's just like home. Yeah, and you can put yours stuff, you don't have to put it on the ground. Um um you could put your feet on the ground and and you can put the your stuff up there's. So you won't be in your way when you put your feet on the ground. Anything else? No. Gettin' ready to eat pretty soon. Huh? When? [laughter] You hungry? Pretty soon I think. There's the call. What do you see outside through the window? Cows, pigs, farms, houses, cars and trees. Grass, flowers and choo choo tracks and water. And um people and I and I could see houses in the backyard and I could see um all different kinds of flowers and signs. And I could see gates. And I could see and um we could see weeds, and You you know why your mother and you are on this? Why you're going to Washington? You know why? Why is she going to Washington with me? Yeah Because she might get lost. I um I ask myself the question, what happens to this Negro boy girl or this child of a minority group that causes him to lose himself along the way, even when he seems to have the ability. Um why is it that some young people seem so poorly adjusted to the environment in which they find themselves? Is it the environment or is it the young person? Is it something which is inherent in both of these? Why is it that most of these youngsters seem to come from one group rather than other groups. In my own experience, these youngsters that I happened to be in contact with and who seem to give the most trouble to themselves into the community were Negroes. Being a Negro it was very difficult for me to feel that inherently a Negro was a troublesome figure and I decided that the answer was not one which was easily come by. That it would have to be sought out in both the way in which a child developed his inheritance and the environment in which he had the opportunity to develop that which he inherited from his parents. Again, I was puzzled and I wanted to seek the answers. I haven't found all of them yet. Still looking for them. But these were interesting questions to me because it seemed to me ridiculous to accept a proposition that might be offered that a boy or girl inherited bad or good treats and that once inherited these things could not be modified and even changed. So I decided the field of education was one way in which we could begin to develop some inquiry into these. What I consider very crucial matters and in not only American life but in world life today. Because we know the American problem is a human problem. Unless we solve that problem, we are in trouble. You live in the south and you grow up under certain situations. You are protected in certain fashions. I know my aunt that I lived with because my mother died when I was very small and my father also died protected us from a lot of of well just a matter of buying a pair of shoes. Instead of going downtown deliberate to buy the shoes. She used to bring things home in what they called approval. And I thought that we were a little bit more well to do than we were and we weren't. I thought that we had unlimited credit. But then as I as I became an adult, I found out that the things that she did was a matter of protection against the Jim Crow laws that existed even in terms of shopping. Didn't want to, you mean your aunt did this so as to protect you from hurt? From the hurt that could come from this kind of thing. And it was during the war when I was trying to get from Atlanta, Georgia to a very small town in Georgia called Cedartown, Georgia and my sister who was working at Tuskegee at the Air Force base there met me in Atlanta to go for this particular weekend and we missed the train and had to take a bus or decide not to go. And we attempted to use the bus and we were told that there were no more colored. When the when the bus had not been filled up yet we had bought the ticket. And those circumstances in which you feel that you just can't tolerate. And I lived in Birmingham, Alabama for a a few years in terms of working as an adult and public transportation was quite a hard thing to take because you could go out to work and you were getting the bus at the same point that other whites were getting the bus because the neighborhood aren't that divided, they're fringe, and the bus driver could say 'No more colored.' yet that he would take on three or four or five of more persons and of course it meant that you had to wait 10 or 15 minutes for another bus to come or either you suffered to go by taxi, which is quite expensive and it's a matter of living in cities in which you find that the greatest hardship has been, now of course, I understand. I'm not white washing any situation that comes from havin' lived in a small southern rural town. But I think that you really become aware of what the whole circumstances are about when you attempt to go out to work and you attempt to live and you you think you are a decent human being and you're just about as moral as most as most people are. In Georgia I had to walk 20 miles to school when there was a white school only two blocks away. I wouldn't know because I've never been in. Does damage to a person's personality when he has to at every crook and turn be on the alert as to what he should do next. Whether he's doing the right thing or the wrong when other people are doing pretty nearly as they please. This is confusing and and damaging and it does something to the person that makes them very mad. They become become angry and some people strike out. It's just such a deep feeling inside of me I can't even explain it. It's just it it almost brings out the fact that if I put myself in this place, how how how bitter I would be. But this is what I seem to do. I put myself in the place of these people. People that I've talked to on this trip have a marvelous outlook. I would say that they feel that this is a breakthrough, a real breakthrough which might mean the kind of emancipation that they've been looking for. The older women at times are more bitter, because I think they've been hurt a lot more. They've been restricted much more than the young. The young is still very flexible, but the old folk, it hits hard and they they become hard in the face and and hard in the soul and it'll take quite a bit to erase these years of struggle and trying to succeed and never being successful. But I've seen so many unfair things happen to my people, unfair things happening to me that I could never say that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. It's land of prejudice, hatred, overriding a minority group. That's what it is and that's what it spells to me. I get so mad when I think about it. What was your feeling? Lonliness? No. I thought I was white. I did really though- think I was white. But I wasn't happy. I never had a friend. If you graduate, they go their way and I come back to my little neighborhood and then I had no friends because I didn't go to school with other colored children, see. I had to make friends in high school and that was a white high school with about 15 Negroes, 800 enrollment, and about 15 Negroes there, but the few that were there, we were friendly to each other and those are my first coloured friends. I was 14 then, but I never knew how to mix good with my own people and I was always backwards where they were concerned because I have a feeling, a strangeness with them. I have never been with colored children. I don't like all colored schools and I don't like all white schools. I like a mixutre. That you can pick your friends if you want to be friends with the white kids and they like you, fine. If prefer your own people, which I definitely did, I could have had friends. My people were a prejudice sort of a family clannish. Um They seem to think that because a Negro was poor, was deprived and oft times didn't look so good. They led us to believe that we were better Cause you were light skinned? Yes, we were better. Took me a long time to I wake up. I guess I was 15 before I began to look at the lovely colored children that I hardly knew and how much they enjoyed each other. And then I began to turn around, see. I wanted my own people. But that little town in Indiana where we were born there were colored and white of course and integrated housing. There was no colored streets, no colored neighborhoods. We lived in the house and across the street the people were white. On next door on either side, they were white. Further down there was another color family. But there wasn't this segregation and just planned segregation. Like Chicago has. Chicago is rotten. Don't get me started Chicago's leadership is rotten. It's all of them. No good. Poor leadership. I have the Electrical Unions. We don't accept color. the plumbers Union. We don't accept color. The glazers, we don't accept color. I get so. We don't accept oh. First place in America was right. The Board of Education couldn't hire 'em if they weren- if they have that bias clause see. If there's any bias clause and then they don't get the big contracts from the cities, the states, the federal. You can't have it, the county. You can't have them. But those contracts go out year after year for all of these people. The bids go out there accepted none of them. Then you're talking about the colored boys on dope. They use narcotics. Damn right. They use them they try to lose themselves, forget that they are part of this vicious society that they live in. Yeah. They could wipe it out if they want to. But as long as it's a problem of the Negro and they're doing it only to the Negro side. But they're so smart. And yet they're crazy. Nothing ever touches the Negro alone. Because my child uses for narcotics. Maybe your child is not gonna to use it, but your neighbor's child is using it too. Took a namby shandy attitude because they were just peddling it there on the south side didn't make any difference, nothin' but colored children. I'm telling you. They got a lot to answer for and all these crooks in Chicago better pray. There is no heaven and hell, because I'm telling you. We just passed or passing through Indiana. You said you're Indiana and integrated housing where you were. Yes. And that was how many years ago, 50 years ago Indiana? Jeffersonville, Indiana and that was southern Indiana. But there were no Negro ghettos there. I was five years old. I don't know too much about it, but I know that there was no Negro neighborhoods in that little town. And the whole town was prejudiced too. But we all lived together. It was about 15- you were about 15 though when you made the discovery? Yes. How do you feel now on this train, 1963 about being Negro? I feel wonderful. I don't believe in the bible a lot, but I believe one thing that everything that's going on is a part of the creation. Everything has a purpose. There's nothing the white man can do to stop it. That's the way I feel about it. You're a religous woman? No. I gave up religion a long time ago, Martin Luther King is my love and my religion. He's a religious man. He's mine. He's my man, my choice for leadership. I don't I don't go- he's not a fanatic. I'm not against religion, I'm against the ignorance and what it's done for the colored people of the south. These northern and these colored children that are coming along now they have religion, but they have it in his place. They have God, they have him in his place. They don't go and tell all these lies, pretend that God is so good. White colored man sings those songs, Jesus is good to me. He is my friend. I say if Jesus is a Negro's friend God doggit I hate to see his animal. [laughter] If God is what the Negro says he is and what man says he is, the only thing he'd have to do is to lift his finger instead of being so much hatred in the world, there could be just this much love. Do you think he'd lift it? No, he wants us to fight, He wants us to be ugly. He wants us to call each other names. I don't understand this- Yet Martin Luther King calls upon him. huh? -concepts of jesus. Martin Luther King concepts Concepts of Jesus. He talks all right about Jesus. He accepts him because he is a man of cloth and I think he is really sincere. But as I said about it, he says time and time again, God helps you if you help yourself. Do you believe in heaven or hell? No. I don't believe in heaven or hell. I think death is eternal rest. Heaven and hell is right here on earth. And I don't look forward to go into a new life because I don't want to go into a new world and have to start this fight all over again. They had one war and held you know, a long time ago when Jesus cast, Satan, was he Lucifer then, wasn't he? And cast him in hell and made him satan. Well that was trouble up there and they thought it was trouble. But you get all of us up there together, that's on this earth. You're gonna see some trouble. I'd rather be right there in the ground. You don't think you don't heaven is going to be integrated. [laughter] Not if this white man can help it. No. The white man really intruded. He felt that he was going to have to sit besides some colored man and having all of his life eternity. I mean not life eternity. I think you'd rather go to hell. How do you feel about the young white boys and girls on this train? I think they are wonderful. I think if every white man in America could get on this train and see the good fellowship. He had either have a stroke or he might have a change of heart. But I have a soft feeling for all young people. All youth, there is hopes there in them. But these dies in the wool no good gray white men that think they are so great and God's gift to the world. I got news for 'em. They are, you know, to me. You do have faith in the future, then. You spoke of the young people and you do despite what you said, you have faith. Oh I not only have faith and hope. I have knowledge. I know this is going to be all right someday. I know it. With the march perhaps, and? That's still not enough. When you come home from Washington, are you going to be satisfied? These white folks asking colored people that question. Are you going to keep on fighting? We're going to keep on fighting. I got news for 'em honey. Only thing I'm sorry for that I'm not 20 years younger. We have love. The white man doesn't know the love that's in a Negros heart. Too much love. That's why we've gone along with crazy American pattern for so many years, but I know one thing that's over. [laughter] I feel good. I feel good riding. And I don't care how tired I get. I'm going to work Friday and I'm going to feel rested because this is something that is really worthwhile and I don't mind staying up a couple of nights and this is something I never do. I go to bed at 10:00 every night. But I want to see this and I'm not going to try to sleep. I want to be a part of all of it. Because tt's really something and I'm just sorry that I didn't bring one of my grandchildren with me. I would have had company and then they would have been a part of something too. I'll show you- You will have a lot to tell them when you return. Yes I will and they're anxiously waiting. They didn't want me to go, they think I am too old to go. Grandmother, what are you going for? I said I'm going because I want to be a part of the freedom rally and march. Oh grandmother, you're too old for that. I says you're never too old to be free and I don't want you to say that and I'm going for you. I was going to show you a picture of my, one of my grandso- He put this in my wallet when I was leaving he said, in case you get lonesome grandmother I want you to look at me. So I told him I said, well I will and I hope I did bring it now. These are pictures of your grandchildren, I As as you're looking, oh very handsome, boy Yes Very handsome. He's 10 How old is he? 10. He's