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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview G-0017, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Septima Clark was hired by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to continue the voter registration and community education classes she had taught through the Highlander Folk School. She recalls some of the successes of her work with the SCLC, especially the passing of the Voting Rights Act. The challenges of the work included prejudice against the female leaders in the organization, violent reactions by local police and Ku Klux Klan, and occasional class prejudice amongst SCLC leaders. Clark notes how several leaders needed to learn techniques for serving poor rural people, and she often corrected their misunderstandings. She compares the leadership strategies of Andrew Young, Wyatt T. Walker, and Ralph Abernathy and explains why the organization flourished under the influence of certain civil rights workers like Young and Jesse Jackson.
Septima Clark describes the work of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in the late 1950s to mid 1960s, especially the community education programs that she directed for the SCLC and the Highlander Folk School. She rejoices in the new voters and civil rights legislation that resulted from their work but noticed drawbacks arising from prejudice against female leaders, disdain for the poor, and clashes in leadership styles.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I should like to begin by asking Ms. Clark if she would please state her name and her present residence.
My name is Septima P. Clark, and I live in Charleston, South Carolina. I started working at the Highlander Folk School in 1954, and we had a court case in 1959. I was arrested, and padlocks were put on the doors at Highlander Folk School. And Dr. King said that he would like to have the program that we started at Highlander come to Atlanta. So I was sent to Atlanta to carry out the citizenship education program, a program designed to eliminate illiteracy and get people ready to register and vote. When Dr. King took it over, we worked at a center in Liberty County, Georgia, a center that was owned by the American Missionary Association. And there we brought people from eastern Texas all the way up to northern Virginia . . .
May I interrupt and ask you two questions.
Surely.
I'm trying to follow it chronologically. Number one: Do you have any idea about the source of financing Dr. King had in mind when he requested that the program be bought from Monteagle under the auspices of SCLC?
At that time the Marshall Field Foundation had given to the Highlander Folk School $250,000 to carry out the Citizenship Education Program. Since the Highlander Folk School was closed, the money had to be transferred to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Did the Highlander Folk School make any conditions upon transferring this
money, or the agent which had granted this money,
It said that I was to be hired in the program; it gave my salary when I
was transferred to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (I was
to receive $6,000 a year.)
Would you continue telling me about the conditions, if any, were made on the grant that went from the Highlander to SCLC to start this citizenship education program?
At the time that I went to SCLC, Andy Young had come down from New York from the United Church Group to work at Highlander. Since Highlander was going to be closed, then Andy Young was also placed in the program. And I really don't know; I think he received $9,000, but I can't exactly say that that's . . .
Can you recall when Andy first came to Highlander and what led to his coming there?
The summer of 1959 Andy came down to help with the Citizenship Education Program. We were taking it around to various communities, and they wanted his help at that time. So he came down that summer and worked in some of the workshops along with me.
He was recruited by Myles . . .
Myles Horton. Myles Horton heard of him in New York and recruited him and
brought him in. Dorothy Cotton also came up to that workshop, and while
there, with her singing, it was felt that we needed Dorothy Cotton in
the Citizenship Education Program, also. So in transferring the program
from Highlander to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dorothy
Cotton and Andy Young were
So Andy then came to SCLC by way of the Highlander Folk School.
That's true.
Now one other question in regard to this. Was there any requirement or stipulation on the original grant that Highlander got, or suggestion, that they would have to bring Andy in? Was that one of the conditions under which the grant was made, the bringing of Andy?
No, no. The grant was made before Andy came down. The grant was made about June of that year, and we were supposed to receive half of it in January and the next half in June.
So when you first went over to SCLC, you were already set up down in south Georgia. Who was it at SCLC [who] worked directly with you in this program?
Directly working with me was Wyatt T. Walker, working for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was really doing all of the business part of it, seeing about the grant, setting up the salary, getting the contracts signed, and getting the center. He learned about the center from Myles Horton, and Myles learned of it through the United Church through Andy Young. And with that in mind, we went down to see about the center, and was able to open that center and start. We didn't bring people to the center the very first month. We travelled a month through one or two states—Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
What kind of people were you looking for?
We were looking for those who could read well aloud and who could write
legibly to come and be trained and go back into
Did you encounter difficulty recruiting individuals to be trained to go back to their community and teach?
We did encounter difficulty, because under the name of Highlander, there were too many people in the South who were afraid of Highlander Folk School. It was really a school for problems, but it was designated as a communist outfit, and so that gave us a good bit of trouble in the communities. And until we could go around and have some lectures and explain to the people what we were doing, we couldn't get them at first.
Why did Highlander have this communist designation?
Because blacks and whites were able to live together and to work together at Highlander, the people of the South had a feeling—in fact, that came out in the McCarthy era—that if blacks and whites mixed, they're bound to have been communists. I had a wonderful experience in the Atlanta airport. A white woman came over to me and was talking about coming from Lake Junaluska. She was really one of the Methodist women that I knew. And another white woman was sitting to the end of the seat didn't know what we were talking about. As soon as this white woman left to go on her plane, she came over to me and said, "What is she talking to you about? Is she telling you about communism?" And I said, "Oh, no. We're church sisters, and we were talking about our churches."
Very
The first part of Georgia that we worked through was Savannah, Georgia, and we worked with Savannah because Hosea Williams was there trying to get people to register to vote and didn't know that he had to teach them to read and write so they could answer the thirty questions that Georgia had for them to answer. When we were successful in Savannah, then Hosea found eighteen counties in the southeastern part of Georgia, and we started schools in those eighteen counties. That's when we brought in people to the center and trained them.
What happened in Savannah?
In Savannah the success was great. We got these people registered to vote, and in three weeks' time we were able, with the help of the SNCC boys and Southern Christian Leadership Conference's staff, we put 9,000 black registered voters on the books.
Can you recall whether this was in '60 or '61?
'61.
So in 1960, what were you doing? It was the year you spent organizing or trying to get . . .
Yes, we were organizing that year. We didn't have the voting rights bill, and numbers of our people were arrested for trying to register. But nevertheless we went through with it and were able to get bail and bond and bailed them out.
What other credentials did Miss Dorothy Cotton bring to the
She was really Director of the program from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's part of the program. Dorothy had been working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference before I came down there, and it was good for her to come and tour the region. She had not worked out from Atlanta, however; she was from Virginia. And when I was transferred from Atlanta, then we formed a team and went through the southern states.
And what, then, was the title of Andy Young in this triumvirate of people, Clark, Cotton, and Andy Young? Can you tell me your designation?
Yes. I was directing the teaching at the workshops. Andy Young was the coordinator of the teaching force. And Dorothy Cotton was director of the center.
Did you have any strong opposition against this kind of a program that you were going to . . .
Oh, yes, we did. We had lots of opposition. Andy Young was badly beaten in Tallahassee, Florida, going down there to try to recruit the people. That was in the latter part of '61. When he went in there to try to recruit people, he was beaten. Dorothy Cotton was along. I wasn't in Tallahassee, but at that time Dorothy was not beaten, but Andy was.
What was your source of funding aside from this original grant you had, the one that was transferred from Highlander?
The only money that I knew of was the money that came from the Marshall
Field Foundation. No, I'm wrong; the Schwartzhaupt
So when you recruited someone, what was their responsibility other than agreeing to be one of the participants, in terms of their upkeep?
They had to also promise that they would go back to the community and open up a school, and they were supposed to teach two nights a week, two hours each night. We had all of the books mimeographed that we wanted them to use in teaching.
Could you demonstrate for me, not in detail, but generally what it was that you taught these people and what it was they were expected to take back to their communities?
We used the election laws of that particular state to teach the reading. We used the amount of fertilizer and the amount of seeds to teach the arithmetic, how much they would pay for it and the like. We did some political work by having them to find out about the kind of government that they had in their particular community. And these were the things that we taught them when they went back home. Each state had to have its own particular reading, because each state had different requirements for the election laws.
Aside from Tallahassee, can you recall any other area of the
In Natchez, Mississippi, I went down there to recruit and to establish schools. And while I was down there, one night in a Baptist church the Ku Klux Klan surrounded us and had planned to come into the church. The Deacons of Defense from Louisiana had come over that night for the program.
Do you recall the year?
That was in the early part of '65, because in '64 we went to Europe and we had just come back. Anyway, at that place we were really having a lot of trouble, but the Chief of Police came out and asked the Ku Klux Klan to go back into their home and asked the colored people would they go to their homes. The reason why I think the Klansmen surrounded us that night at the church was because that day we had carried a large number of people up to the courthouse to register to vote. And while there, one of the white men of the White Citizens' Council kicked a white boy who was working along with me. And when he did that, I called Washington to get the Attorney General to see if we could peacefully work at that courthouse. That's where we had to register. In a few minutes, he called the Chief of Police of Natchez, and when he did that we got protection at the registration office.
Can you recall any outstanding students, any students who left the school to go on to distinguish themselves in the movement?
Oh, we have had numbers of students. When I was at Highlander in 1955 and
we had our first college workshop, into that
Did you ever have an experience whereby somebody was planted in the school to disrupt your process of trying to teach?
Some of those same young college students at Highlander when we had our first college workshop. Long—and I'm trying to think of his first name—came from. . . . He's now President at Talladega. But anyway, he came from Fisk University to talk to the students, and they were afraid that he was going to be what they call "Uncle Tom-ish," and they walked out and slammed the door. But later on they came back in, and at the close of that workshop they decided that they were going to do many things back in their communities.
So you didn't have any either real or imagined fears that somebody was trying to disrupt this endeavor, like the FBI or the CIA or anything of that sort.
I really didn't have that feeling, but I learned after that that there
were people sent in to spy on us. And in 1969 [1959?] they came, and I
found out that the FBI had sent in people. They were peeping all around
to see if black girls and white boys, and white
When did you leave SCLC?
In 1970. Not until '70; I resigned in 1970.
Did you ever think about resigning prior to that time?
Well, no, I really didn't. Regardless of the hardships that I had to go up against—like being surrounded by the Klan in Natchez; like in Jackson, kneeling down before Thompson's tank in Jackson, Mississippi; having the mountaineers march around and try to frighten us up on the hill there at Highlander—none of those things discouraged me. And of course I was arrested in August 30, 1969 [1959]. Myles Horton was away; he was at Monaco attending a workshop there. And they came. They arrested me, finally, they said, for teaching in an integrated group. But when it went into the district court, they had that I was serving liquor. When they went into the federal courts, then they used integration.
Those were external problems. Did you ever have any kind of internal difficulties or hardships in dealing with people within the organization? Within the whole of SCLC.
Oh, I really can say that I didn't have any trouble. There were young people there who would. . . . Every now and then we would have to try to settle their little arguments. But it wasn't anything to actually deter the movement.
Right. You didn't have anything in the movement which
No, we didn't have anything like that, not with the people who came in.
Good. Did any of the leaders of SCLC, like Wyatt T. Walker, Dorothy King,
Abernathy,
I wrote out a citizenship program, but I had to write a proposal to get the money, and I wrote out the day-by-day program that I took with me to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I can remember Reverend Abernathy asking many times, why was Septima Clark on the Executive Board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? And Dr. King would always say, "She was the one who proposed this citizenship education which is bringing to us not only money but a lot of people who will register and vote." And he asked that many times. It was hard for him to see a woman on that executive body.
How can you interpret that? What was he concerned about? Do you have any idea?
Well, I think that we live in a man-made world, and because of that, as a man, he didn't feel as if women had really enough intelligence to do a thing like what I was doing.
This was never expressed, but this is the way you interpret.
This is the way I interpreted it, because he kept asking
Can you recall whether or not you had to have any dealings with Miss Baker, because she didn't leave SCLC until late '61 or '62?
She had gone when I got to Atlanta. When I had my first meeting with Wyatt T. Walker, Miss Ella Baker had gone. Now Miss Ella Baker came up to Highlander many times while I was there and she was working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She told me many of the things about the men that she disliked, and that they disliked about her, a woman. She had brains. And because of the brain power that she had, they didn't like the things that she said to them. She didn't see why a brochure should have sixteen pictures of Dr. King. She couldn't see why a sign over the door where we met there on Auburn Avenue should have "Dr. King and Reverend Abernathy". She thought that was real foolish, just to have the center there rather than the other things. So I felt that she had a real point there, but nobody was going to listen to her at that time.
In '61, when they had the freedom rides going on, and late in '62 while
the freedom rides were still going on, they eventually moved them to
Albany, which wasn't exactly around Savannah. But that was around the area in which this school was in. What kind of
activities were you engaged in during the time of the Albany
movement?
I went down to Albany, and I stood at the courthouse door, I guess for
eight or ten days, from morning until late afternoon,
So, aside from the Citizenship Education School, you were also active in the streets in trying to get people to register and vote. The thing I'm trying to ask you is, you weren't confined to this one particular role of teaching in the school?
Well, the thing about the schools, we had them once or twice a month. And in between, we went into the various communities. Sometimes I was in Albany; sometimes I spent three weeks in Selma, Alabama; sometimes I was in Jacksonville, Georgia. In between the workshops I went to these various places to work with the people.
Now let me ask you a few names and get your reaction to them, and I might preface them with a statement somebody else said. But let me just ask you first about this man James S. Wood, who was the public relations man of SCLC. He came down with Wyatt T. Walker. How did you perceive him and the role that he played?
James Woods, I can't forget him, working there at the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. I feel that he was just too middle-class to be
working with an organization that wanted to reach all the people,
because he didn't have any patience to work in
So if you were going to rate him on the basis of his effectiveness in the organization, what kind of a rating would he get?
Working in the organization with the people that I felt we needed to work with, I'd have to really rate him "zero". But don't forget, now, he's an intelligent man.
All right. Well, you might
He did? [laughter]
Yes, he regarded him with . . .
Well.
Now I would like your reactions and perceptions of the role that Wyatt T. Walker was fulfilling as Executive Director.
Wyatt T. Walker was just as busy getting cards out for me—you know, name
cards—getting forms to sign, but I can't see him interested in the
program that had to go into the community. He was a great businessman,
and as I see him today—I visited him last April—and I see that he's
still that way. He likes the church to have a lot
What about Andy Young, the same kinds of observations.
Now with Andy, when Andy came to us he had been working with middle-class
students who could go to Europe, and he went with them to Europe most of
the time. The first group that came in when Andy was there came from
eastern Texas, and we took them to the ocean for our recreation one
Friday afternoon. And those women wanted to bring back some water to let
people know that they had been to Atlantic Ocean. They took the mats off
the table in Howard Johnson; they wanted their children to see that they
were able to eat in a Howard Johnson. And Andy said to me, "You know, I
never thought anything of things like that." He said, "You know, if I
hadn't come on this trip with you, I would not have realized just how
little of experiences other people have, so I'm glad I've had the chance
to work with you." And he grew, though. Down at Penn Center we had a
What year was that in?
That was 1965, I guess it was. It was right after the voting rights bill.
The latter part. And we had a large number of people, and he and Dorothy
were singing one of the songs, and both of them had their eyes closed.
And I saw a young woman who was really crying, and her face was so
distorted, and I wondered what was wrong with her. And she had come from
that part of Georgia where Cononea is, and a policeman had arrested her
at Cononea, and when they arrested her they put her on the square. They
called her a mulatto, and they wanted to make her ashamed. They put her
on the square, and you know, they put the cattle prods to her heels to
see her jump up and down. And so she couldn't sing "I love everybody."
She said, "I just can't sing it." So I called attention to Andy and
Dorothy. I said, "You've got to open your eyes and see what's happening
to this young woman. She can't sing that song. She can't love everybody
when the people treated her so mean. And she came from there into this
workshop." You know where Cononea is? Down in Georgia there; it's not
too far from Albany. Anyway, Andy and I really had some words about
that. [laughter]
That's great. So then, aside from Andy Young, were there any other men in
the organization of prominence that you can recall
Well, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. When he came in, we were . . .
When you mention the name, see if you can come as close to the year as you possibly can.
Oh. The Reverend Jesse Jackson came to us in Warrenton, Virginia, and he brought a proposal to Dr. King. It must have been in 1963, right after those little girls were bombed to death. And he wanted to let us know that we should wrestle from the various states a part of the construction work, so that people could have jobs. And he particularly said, "In Georgia you can't even get a black man to wave the flag for the cars to pass by." Dr. King thought well of what Jesse Jackson was saying, and he really felt that he was going to be a worthwhile fellow to have in the movement. And I did, too. I think for a long time Jesse worked real well with the underprivileged people. But in 1971—now this is after King's death—I went up to Chicago, and I noticed a great glory that he was having there at a Saturday morning meeting. And I said, "Well, now, here's this guy who's turned. He's becoming a god, also."
What about Hosea Williams, out of Savannah? How was your working with him?
Now Hosea Williams, I worked with Hosea, and we worked real well in those
counties. Hosea was a dynamic leader. And in the workshops he would have
a session, and he would drill into those people those thirty questions.
They had to answer twenty-four of the thirty questions before they could
register to vote. And he really did a good job, doing that. There was
one fault I had to find
Go ahead.
In the nights when we got through, he would have these young boys out, and they would be having a big time. Hosea likes to drink, and I think he ruined a young man there who is sick now, almost a vegetable, in Savannah. And I think that that was Hosea's downfall, of sitting down and drinking with the young boys, and they didn't know when to stop.
What about the other field staff? Can you recall any? We're just dealing with the men; I'm going to ask you about the women . . .
James Orange worked in. . . . Oh, James Orange was very good. Carl Ferris is another one who worked real well with us. The only thing about them, they were. . . . James Orange was a flexible guy.
He was out of Furman then, right?
Yes. Carl Ferris has no flexibility whatsoever. He wants the thing in an
up-to-date manner, and those people who couldn't work his way, he didn't
want them to work. This is the fault we found with Carl Ferris. I was
wondering why he wasn't in this workshop, but I do know that he and the
Kings don't
But James Orange was flexible.
Yes, he was. And we had another guy down there we called "Sunshine." I
understand that he's very sick today. A mule stepped on his foot and he
didn't pay much attention to it, and he had to have that foot taken off.
That was at Dr. King's funeral. So Mrs. Carr was telling me that
Sunshine was very good to bring in people. This was all he could do; he
wasn't academics guy at all. Leon Hall, the
That's right. Now there were, from my vantage point, some unofficial voices in SCLC, namely Stanley Levinson and Bayard Rusten. You may know some of them. Did you ever receive any kind of advice or instruction from these individuals?
Not any. Stanley Levinson, I met him at Highlander, and he was in the Highlander workshop when they were celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary. I thought he was very good, but his big thrust was helping us to get money from various foundations. Bayard Rusten, a scholarly guy, and whenever he came to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference he, too, had scholarly lectures to make. I felt that he was exceptionally good, and I have been in other workshops with him at Riverside in New York.
Very good. What about the women in the movement? Aside from you and Miss Ella Baker and Miss Dorothy Cotton, whom we've mentioned, can you think of any other women in the SCLC organization or who influenced the SCLC organization?
Thinking about SCLC, there was a woman named Lillie Hunter. She worked
with SCLC, and I felt that she was very good. She went with
So you can't think of any other women who one way or another, either officially or unofficially, influenced the movement.
I'm trying to think to see if I know of any other women who influenced the movement. Now I worked with a number of women in South Carolina, women from Newberry, South Carolina, and I can't think of their names. But that was around 1956 and 1957.
No, that's much earlier.
Yes. the Southern Christian Leadership. It was with the Highlander
people, getting schools established and getting people to come to
Highlander. But with the Southern Christian Leadership
Who was Esau Jenkins?
Esau Jenkins was a dynamic leader—he's dead now—from John's Island who came to the Highlander Folk School and went back because he wanted to get people registered to vote, and set up the first citizenship school there. And after setting up the first citizenship school, they built a building where they sold things to themselves, and we held classes in the back. And we held workshops down there, also.
[Interruption]
In regard to philosophy, a lot of people, I understand, were drawn to Dr. King because of his personality and his charisma. Others were drawn to him because of his non-violent philosophy. What was it that one may attribute to your alliance with the organization, in regard to Dr. King's philosophy?
Thinking about Dr. King, I had the experience of knowing that he was really non-violent. Coming from Albany, Georgia, one night, we were riding in a car, and some white fellows came behind us and finally cut across in front of us. And the young man who was driving us—Dr. King was in the car—got out and went into the trunk of his car and took out a pistol, and the white fellows went on. And Dr. King said, "Frank, do you think I wanted you to do that? No, Frank, that's not the way to do it." Then one night I was on an airplane, Southern . . .
What was his last name, do you remember?
I don't know Frank's last name, really. And coming from Montgomery on a
little Southern plane, they had a man as the steward instead of a
stewardess. And this was in the early part of '64. A fellow jumped up
and slapped Dr. King, and he just moved over. First he said to him,
"You're reading about yourself, aren't you?—he was reading the paper—and
then he hit him. And Dr. King just moved right over and didn't say a
word. And the steward got him and put him back in his seat. In a few
minutes he jumped up again and drew back to hit him, and that steward
got him and tied him down in the seat until we reached Atlanta. But Dr.
King never would strike back. In Birmingham at Gaston's Motel in 1963,
before those little girls were killed, we were having a workshop down
there. And numbers of men were talking, and Dr. King was introducing a
fellow from California. A white fellow came up with his collar wide
open, and we wondered if this was the man he was introducing. And when
he got up there he hit Dr. King in the face twice. And Dr. King dropped
his hands like that of a newborn baby. And I was sitting to the front,
and I said, "Don't hit him: Don't hit him:" I knew that he'd just had
some trouble with that heart, where that woman stuck that knife or
scissors or dagger right across from the heart. And so he dropped his
hands, and the other men jumped up, old men eighty years of age and all,
they had sticks: they were about to hit him. And Dr. King said, "Don't
touch him. Don't touch him. We have to pray for him." But somebody
called the policeman. The policeman came and took this white guy away.
And they wanted Dr. King to come up and put charges against him, which
he
It was Rockwell who had hit him?
Rockwell, that's who it was. And so it must have been two years or so after that, a fellow killed him, the leader of that Nazi party. And he wouldn't do one thing. And Mrs. Parks was in that meeting, and she went out and got a bottle of Coca-Cola. She wanted Dr. King to get some Coca-Cola and some aspirins, because she knew that his head must have been hurting at that time.
Then in 1963—it was Good Friday—we saw those guys roughing him up to take him to jail because he had planned the march, you know, to get the stores and things opened uptown. At the same time we were working with young people, telling them if they couldn't march without being violent, then we'd have to take them off the line. Well, when I saw him throwing his hands down when somebody hit him. . . . Then another time I was in Chicago, when we had a New Politics convention, and I thought sure they were going to get him then. Blacks were marching around, and seemingly they were angry about it, too. And I thought, "Now they're going to really get him." But they got him out of a door and got him onto the plane, and a policeman herded all of us out through another door and we got home and went away that next day. But we've been in some very . . .
So you were absolutely convinced that he was a non-violent . . .
I am convinced, because he would not strike back. And he was the only man. I can't tell you that I feel that same way. I can't fight—I've never been a person to fight—but when Fanny Lou Hamer was being tried in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1964 because she and some others went into the front part of a bus station in Indianola, Mississippi. . . . They threw them all in jail, and she is a crippled woman, and they beat her terribly. Well, when I heard those men testifying at that trial, I wished that a chandelier would drop on their heads and kill them. My mind wasn't non-violent. And I don't think that I've gotten to the place today where my mind is quite non-violent, because I still have feelings at times that I'd like to do something violently to stop people.
Did Dr. King have a difficult problem keeping most of the flock from engaging in violence?
Well, sure, he did. This guy that spoke this afternoon, C. T. Ribbon? C.
T. Ribbon had a fist fight on the [laughter]
Do you remember the year of that?
That was early '63. Yes, Birmingham, first time. Yes. Oh.
Did they fear any kind of problem within the structure of SCLC?
Well, whenever he got the executive group together, he would lecture to them about being non-violent. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win if you're going to fight back."
And he had Stokely Carmichael to come to his house to dinner to tell Stokely, "You can't win if you're going to send the boys up and down the street to knock out the window glasses of the stores along Morgan Avenue." And I really felt that he meant it. But that was the way he was. And then when he received that Nobel Peace Prize, when he received that $54,000, he said up there in Oslo, Norway, he said, "I'm on the mountaintop now, but I have to think about those people down in the valley who placed me here. This money is not mine. I must give it to the NAACP, to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to the Urban League," and another thing that McKissick represented.
CORE.
CORE. He had to give it to those. And when we came back to New York and we went up to the Armory that night and had a big program, he had the checks made out and he gave that money away. And his wife was furious. Coretta was furious. I know she was. She spoke; she said, "You're not thinking about the children." He said, "They'll be taken care of."
I see.
But you see, his way and her way had been paid to Norway; the country took care of them. Reverend King and his wife were taken care of by contributions coming into the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I don't know whether Wyatt T. Walker paid, but I paid my way, and I felt that it was justifiable for me to pay my way when a Southern black man could win a Nobel Peace Prize.
So let me ask you to make this comparison, if you will. You had the
opportunity to observe the development of SCLC under Wyatt
Wyatt T. Walker could get his (people say) "dander up" every now and
then, and he could dress you out. I think both of them would take a nip.
Wyatt T. Walker would go every afternoon down to those joints and get
him something to drink, and he didn't disown it. Andy, if he drank
anything, he hardly would let you see it, and he kept a very even kind
of way of speaking to the people, regardless. He used to say
continuously, "Let God do it. God'll answer this question for you." And
even Dorothy Cotton used to be angry with him when he'd say, "Let God do
it." [laughter]
What did he mean by that?
He wasn't going to touch it. [laughter]
[laughter]
If they had any kind of disagreement, you know, and she disliked what was said or anything of that type, he wasn't going to touch it. He was going to let God do it, let you work it out yourself.
[laughter]
Yes.
What about Wyatt T. Walker?
He would always try to straighten things out, and he wasn't non-violent. He straightened it out violently. He would curse sometimes. I never did see him fight anybody, but he'd let them know how he'd feel about it.
So which one do you think SCLC enjoyed its greatest growth under?
Under Andy Young, I'm sure.
God did it, then.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Wyatt T. Walker and that of Andy Young.
Yes. And I said that Andy Young and Wyatt T. Walker were two different types of people. Wyatt T. Walker was a great businessman who, to my mind, was not at all non-violent. Andy Young was more on the non-violent group, and there were problems that he never would touch. He'd always say, "Let God do it." And so when we went to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, there weren't but two women working in the office, Lillie Hunter and. . . . The guy in Cincinnati, his wife. She was a Smith at that time.
I'm a little confused here. The Dorchester School was apart from SCLC?
Oh, yes. I mean it was located down in Liberty County, Georgia.
Right. And when did you move to Atlanta?
I worked out from Atlanta.
And when did you start work? That's when you said, "When the school moved to SCLC, it wasn't but two women." I was trying to follow.
When we came from the Highlander Folk School.
Oh.
You see, Andy and I came from the Highlander Folk School to Atlanta. Dorothy Cotton and Lillie Hunter, those were the two women working there. Under Andy's regime, we branched out to something like fifteen different women. The organization grew. See, at that time, they were just upstairs in two or three rooms.
Did this happen as a result of Andy's initiative, or in spite of him?
I think it happened because of the team of workers, Andy Young, Dorothy Cotton, and I, going into the various communities, getting the citizenship schools started. There was at one time 195 classes going on in the eleven deep-South states, which called for a number of workers to work. And those women had to mimeograph books for each state. They had to get material out. They had to order material from Texas, we used some, and we used the Laubach method, too. They had to keep track of the students and all of the things that we needed for the students, so it branched out into a big thing. Expanded, rather.
In your observation of what was happening in the so-called hierarchy of SCLC, which one of the individuals do you feel had the greatest influence on Dr. King?
Andy Young. I think Andy Young had more influence with Dr. King than Wyatt T. Walker.
Did he have more than Abernathy?
A thousand times more. [laughter]
He did?
I really feel that. Abernathy tried so hard to be a Dr. King, so much so that he. . . . Well, he got credit cards for him and for his wife to travel, and when Dr. King had to call in these things, he said, "I'll not do it." They were at variance, but King would never fuss with him. They were at variance many times. And the secretaries would try to get to Reverend Abernathy and tell Reverend Abernathy what Dr. King would like for him to do, but he resented it.
But Reverend Abernathy was the treasurer of the organization.
Yes, he was the treasurer.
He wrote the checks.
That's right.
Kept up with the money.
His secretary, Lillie Hunter, did it.
He wasn't the one who wrote the checks, but he would certainly okay them all.
Yes. He was supposed to okay them, but, you know, he had to do what the. . . . We were on the trustee board, but there was a financial group, and that was made up of two or three men like Randolph Blackwell and Andy Young and Dr. King and Lillie Hunter.
You've suggested that Andy had the greatest influence on Dr. King. Who had the greatest influence on Andy Young?
Well, I felt—and I don't want to give myself a lot of praise—but I felt
that working with Andy Young, that I was able to get him to drop down
from a highly middle-class man to where he could work with low-income,
poverty-stricken people. He has said that so
Good.
I could always work with the. . . . Well, I've been one all my life. I've been a poverty-stricken, low-income person, and I know how to work with them.
What, then, do you regard as having been the high point of SCLC, when it was at its height in terms of influence on the American people?
I really feel that when we had the marches in Birmingham and were able to
get the civil rights bill—in 1964 it came out, before we went to
Europe—and then when we did the Selma-to-Montgomery march in March of
'65. And in August of '65 we got the voting rights bill. I really felt
that that was a great turning point and that it had great effect on the
American people. And the reason why I say that: I went into Selma,
Alabama, and worked from May, '65, to August getting people to learn how
to write their names. I had opposition with five black preachers, who
didn't want me to teach them to write their names in cursive writing.
And when they wrote their names in cursive writing, they received a
number which said that they could register when the federal man came
down in August. All right, Dr. King sent us in there to get this done:
Ben Mack of Columbia; Bernice Robinson of Charleston; Asley Johnson, now
of Idlewild, Michigan, but then of Monroe, North Carolina. We went in
together. All of them left me; they couldn't take the foolishness
You all took a great deal of . . .
Alabama: Camden, Alabama.
What, then, do you regard as having been the low point
I went into Oxford, Mississippi. I came back from Europe in '64, and I went into Oxford, Mississippi, because these same people who had been beaten, their trial came up then. And most of the SNCC boys had gone somewhere to have a meeting. And I went into that trial, and you know, we didn't have any support. I went in, and I couldn't get any of the black people in Oxford to give me a room to stay there. I had to go all the way down to Holly Springs, ride forty-six miles every morning, and I did that for five days back and forth to that trial.
Yes, they were afraid. They wouldn't give us anything to eat. Had to go
to a drugstore and buy potato chips and things like that, until I could
get back to Holly Springs to that lady. And the woman was a beautician,
so she wasn't afraid. And her husband was working at the college in
Holly Springs, so she was not afraid to keep me. And I was able to go
back and forth from her house. And all I was doing was sitting up in
that courtroom while these people were tried. But I thought that it was
a terrible thing that nobody from SCLC was there to support us at that
time. There were five of our people. Enelle Ponder, she was a great
Enelle Ponder.
Uh-huh. She lives here in Atlanta.
I know it. We went to school with her.
You did! Poor Enelle. She was. . . . And the only thing Enelle would say
when they called her up on that witness stand was "Bless God" or
something like that. Wouldn't speak out for herself. Oh, but her eye was
She's a beautiful person. She's out of the movement now, so she's not talking to many people.
Oh, really? I wish I could find her.
I know exactly where she lives, but she won't answer the door.
No? Oh, I'm sorry to hear about Enelle. [Interruption]
She's had a hard time, and a terrible time. She fell in love first with Moses Paris.
Sometime in Mississippi?
Yes. In Mississippi. That was in Greenwood. And then after falling in love with him, then she came back here and had two children for Bevel; the first one died. And I don't know if she can get over . . .
And she's living with Bevel?
Uh-huh.
I didn't know that. She was a very courageous girl.
She's got a girl now, and she has her master's degree. What I call her,
she and that boy—and I can't think of his name—in . . . [Interruption]
Who was the young man?
I can't think of his name. A guy in Savannah, Georgia, and he was a great friend of Hosea. He started drinking with Hosea, and then he started with dope.
Can you think of any more of the young ladies who seem to have been waylaid by the movement, or put in a kind of position as Enelle?
As Enelle was?
You can just share the names if you care to think of any. You don't have to feel . . .
I can't think of any of the young women. They seem to have been pretty strong. I don't know of any of them who fell by the wayside like. . . . Now some of the white girls fell in love with the boys, and they couldn't do anything else about it.
From your observation, when the white girls came into the movement, did they create any problems?
Great problems. [laughter]
Was this with SCLC as well as SNCC?
SCLC. You know, we had a program called "Scope."
Hosea Williams had.
Yes, Hosea Williams had that "Scope" program. And so we had large numbers
of white girls coming in. A whole group from Friendsworld College worked
with me in Selma, registering and voting.
Did the black girls resent them?
Very much. And in Mississippi I had lots of complaints from the black girls about the white girls coming in. They claimed that they took over the black boys completely, and they weren't able to get anything done. And the same thing was true in California when I was out there. The black girls, when they went to parties at Santa Cruz, the black boys took up all their time with the white girls.
Well, let me on this one, and then this would be the end, because I know you're fatigued; I'm tired myself. In '66 and '67, I believe, you really had some turbulent years in SCLC, because this was the time when you were having opposition from black power advocates. At the same time, Dr. King came out with his position against the war. What was your perception at this time of what was going on?
Dr. King came to Charleston in 1967, July the 31st it was, and our whole
city was under martial law. But the white students from the college came
to hear him; they didn't want him to leave. Rosa Parks and all came down
there. And they were getting a lot of good history. He was telling about
the Vietnam war, how it happened to come for, what kind of man Thieu
was, and the like. And they were anxious to hear all of these things.
But we were able to get him in and out. And they had a lot of men that
they made officers just for that day to
So what was your position on this stand he took that America should be out of that Vietnam War? Did you think it was a mistake on his part?
No. I went to Washington in March of 1968 and worked with a team from all over the United States interviewing senators and representatives. They gave me the nine southeastern states. I was the only black member of that team. And every one of those black [sic] representatives and senators treated me with real accord, I must say, except the Louisiana man, Kirkland Finley. And he said, "I know what the American Friends Service Committee wants"—they had four questions—"they want us to take the troops out of Vietnam, and this is what they want. And we're not about to listen." I said "Thank you," and I moved on. Anyway, the man from Tennessee said that "We have written Johnson many letters about that, and we feel that he should draw the troops out." That Sunday night when I got home, Johnson made that statement that he was not going to run for a third term. And he said that his daughter said, "Daddy, does Robb have to go to the war?"—that was her husband—and so he changed his mind about the Vietnam war.
This was about two years after King had originally come out for it, but
Very much so. When we went to New York in '66 at Riverside
Yes.
Those black men surrounded. . . . I thought we weren't going to get through that picket line. But somebody carried me through the picket line. I was up there that night.
Can you recall anybody within the hierarchy of SCLC who tried to get Dr. King not to speak out against the war?
No.
One other thing, then. What about when Black Power cries were being heard? How did this affect you in SCLC?
With the black power boys, I was in Atlanta one Sunday and Monday. I invited Stokely Carmichael to come with me. I wanted to talk to him. And he brought six other boys. I brought them to Pascal's and fed them all. And when I asked him about his behavior, you know, with the black power bit, he just laughed. I said, "Can't you find something else to tell these young men to do other than to have them going around with their fists clenched, saying ‘Black Power’ and intimidating black people up and down Auburn Avenue?" He was tickled to death about it. But I saw him in Washington since that time, and he said, "Mrs. Clark talked with me. I didn't believe her, but when I went to Europe Nkrumah gave me three books to read and said, ‘You still want to fight?’ Said, ‘Now, if you want to fight, tell me. Do you want to fight now?’ " And he had changed his mind about his fighting in his black power thing.
Mrs. Clark, this has been a real, real insightful interview, and you've
made, I think, some significant revelations to me. And it's
I think the thing that I would like to have known is the fact that when Dr. King came back from Europe and when we were working through Alabama and Mississippi and other places, he said then that "There is something else we must do. We must get into politics, and we must see about the economy, so that our people can have a better status." And he brought in a man here from Michigan, who was going to do something. I wish I knew his name now, but I've got it in my piece that I'm writing called "A Fabulous Decade." He brought this man in to . . .
Saul Alinsky?
No, Saul Alinsky came before that, and this was another guy who was going through the South. Yes, I remember Alinsky and Samson, who worked with him. But this was another fellow who came, and he went through the southern states to see if they could find a way to do something. You know, SWAPSCO was started then, that agricultural program whereby they could get more money for their crops. That was the one thing that came out of that. And I think he would have been able to do so much more, but he was cut short then.
Have you ever heard of the man Jack O'Dell?
Do I?! Yes.
Tell us something about Jack O'Dell. I know that he was a
Yes.
He worked behind the scenes.
That's right.
But I don't know much more than that.
Jack O'Dell was a very dedicated worker, but he had worked with some
communist groups in New Orleans before he came to. . . . And they found
it out, and when they found it out, SCLC had a meeting, and they had to
do away with O'Dell. He was the guy
What was his role in SCLC?
He had a role not exactly like Wyatt T. Walker, but he was really . . .
He was running the New York office.
Yes, he was running, but he was in Atlanta for quite some time, you know, working here with the groups and sending the groups out into what we called the hinterland.
And I was reading in one of the newsletters whereby he spoke to some of your groups.
Yes, he did.
Citizenship education.
Yes, we were happy for him, because he did an excellent job talking to them.
Well, Mrs. Clark, we'll terminate at this time, and I want
If you need more
END OF INTERVIEW