Transcript
I know the one thing we did right was the day we start to fight.
Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on. Hold on.
Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on.
People have asked me where the the notion for eyes in the prize came from and it came from a lot of places. But one of the uh places is from Frederick Douglas, the black abolitionist uh who said better than 130 years ago uh that those who profess to favor freedom but deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
They want the rain without thunder and lightning and the ocean without the muddy roar of its waters. This may be a moral struggle or physical one. He's talking about the civil war. Moral struggle or physical one or both. But it is a struggle for power conceds nothing without a demand. It never has. It never will find out just what a people will submit to. And you will find out the exact amount of injustice and wrong that will be visited upon them and that will continue. until it is resisted with words or blows or both. For the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
It was that notion of people beginning to rise up against oppression that gave birth to the first inklings of eyes in the prize. My first memory of civil rights really revolves around a story of a 14-year-old boy. He was my age named EMTT who went south from the summer from Chicago to the deep Mississippi. He was killed and for many years uh it became for for for many of us it was a time that we understood our vulnerability in this society and uh I always thought that was the story. But as we began to make the shows and the series Eyes in the Prize and look further into the story of Emtt Tel, we came across another story equally if not more powerful. And that was about his uh uh uncle Moight who being a native Southerner who had watched what happened to to black men who stood up against that system of segregation uh stood up to identify the murderers of of his nephew and uh as we could as he understood he could never go back to his house after that testimony. It was that standing up, that act of courage that started uh this notion of of civil rights movement of people beginning to fight back against oppression.
Awakenings produced by Judith Vakani, edited by Dan Eisenberg.
I guess our courage came out of because we didn't have nothing that we couldn't lose nothing, but we wanted something for ourselves and for our children. And so we took a chance with our lives.
We wed up the steps with this circle of soldiers with bayonets drawn. And uh walking up the steps that day was probably one of the biggest feelings I've ever had. I figured I had finally cracked it.
My freedom is very much entangled with the freedom of every other man.
So, I'm fighting for my own freedom here. Are you scared?
Yes, I'm very much afraid. Everyone here is
[cheering]
in a 10-year period in the 1950s and 1960s. America fought a second revolution.
It was fought in the south by black people and white.
It was fought in the streets, in churches, in courts, in schools.
It was fought to make America be America for all its citizens. These were America's civil rights years.
I take it then that you are advocating Negroes in New York to stay out of these national chain stores.
Oh no, that's not true. I'm advocating that American citizens interested in democracy should stay out of chain stores.
I have thought for a long time that Negros should be allowed to sit at the counters where we'll serve downtown.
This is just a part of many things that I think they should be allowed to do.
All the people of the South are in favor of segregation and Supreme Court or no Supreme Court. We are going to maintain segregated schools down in Dixie. If we're willing to be beaten for democracy and you misuse democracy in the street, you beat people.
Get out in front of the camera and go on.
It wasn't a matter of being in front of the camera. It's a matter of facing your sh and then hide your blows.
It was a clear engagement between those who wish the fullness of their personalities to be met and those that would destroy us physically and psychologically. You do not walk away from that. This is what movement meant.
movement meant that finally we were encountering on a mass scale the evil that had been destroying us on a mass scale. You do not walk away from that.
You continue to answer it.
I always think of what Matthew Jr. told me and when he called when he called from the jail he said he said be cool mother and that was very um trying and yet it was amusing too. He's telling me to be cool at this point.
in the storm.
We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself. a society that can live with its conscience.
And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.
his basic beliefs. What is an inalienable right? What is equal treatment under the law? What is liberty and justice for all?
It was a hard fight, but the prize was freedom and no American could afford to lose.
I know the one thing we did right was the day we start to fight. Keep your
eyes on the prize. Hold on. Hold on. Keep your eyes
on the prize. Hold on.
For much of this century, America was segregated. It was our social system, our way of keeping blacks and whites apart. By custom and by law, most blacks were servants, laborers, tenant farmers, went to separate poor schools, lived in separate poorer housing.
Segregation was the context for black lives throughout the country, but especially in the south, a complete environment socially and psychologically.
Listen, for a long time, I had the idea
that a man with white skin was superior because it appeared to me that he had everything.
And I figured if God uh would justify
the white man having everything that God had put him in a position to be the best.
If you born into a system that's wrong, whether it's a slave system or whether it's a segregated system, you take it for granted. And uh I was born into a system that was segregated and uh denied blacks the right to vote. also denied women the right to vote. And uh I took it for granted. Nobody told me any different. Nobody said it was uh strange or unusual or wasn't like other states.
Segregation had its rules and southern blacks knew that if they didn't obey them, if they didn't step aside to let a white man pass, or if a black man looked too closely at a white woman, the system could be enforced by violence. Groups like the Kulux Clan used terrorism to uphold white supremacy and were an everpresent symbol of intimidation.
But there were always blacks who fought against segregation.
Many ministers preached equality and black unions and organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People worked for it for decades through speeches, demonstrations, and court cases.
All American News brings you our people's contribution to America and freedom.
World War II had an enormous impact on black hopes for change.
Black Americans fought and died in a segregated US Army, but they saw a larger unsegregated world. They saw their own power as they fought and as some were trained as officers and specialists and they came back with a new sense of themselves.
I spent 3 years overseas in New Guinea and I became an officer during that period. I had been eager to exercise authority. So when we got out uh it was just one more step to say well look we aren't going to take this anymore.
The south they came back to was determined to resist change and most of the nation was not ready to hear black demands for justice.
Then in the early 1950s, after years of carefully planned litigation, the NAACP brought these demands to the Supreme Court.
The test cases were set in schools.
On May 17th, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown versus Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional.
It called into question the whole system of segregation.
It was quite a shock to southerners to be told that the way they had been running their affairs for many many years were no longer acceptable to the nation as a whole. And a great many of the older crowd of white so southerners felt that they had they came of an ancestry that were founders of the republic and they knew the constitution and customs and laws of the country as well as anybody else.
The South resisted desegregation with legal and illegal delays. It would take years before the Supreme Court's decision would be implemented in any meaningful way, but it had one immediate effect.
I think that the uh greatest impact of the Brown decision was on the black community itself. Uh it was a statement to the black community that they had a friend, so to speak, the Supreme Court.
And so it emboldened the communities of blacks around the country to move forward uh to secure their own rights.
The change began slowly, especially in rural areas. Blacks knew they could still lose their livelihood or their lives if they pushed whites too fast.
But step by step, the change began.
First with small acts of personal courage.
In September 1955, an old man named Mo Wright took that remarkable first step.
His story starts at the Talahhatchee River in Money, Mississippi.
Here, the body of Mosight's nephew, Emtt Till, was found weighed down in the waters.
Two local men were arrested and charged with the murder.
They were white and Matill was black.
Till had come down from Chicago to visit his relatives.
This is Mo right. I am the uncle of ET Lewis Till
Sunday morning about 2:30 someone called at the door and I said who is it? And he said this is Mr.
bride, I want to talk with you and the boy. And when I opened the door,
there was a man standing with a pistol in in one hand and a flashlight in the
other hand. And he asked me, "Did I have two boys there from Chicago?" I told him
I have. And he said, "I wanted I want the boy that done all that talk."
And they marched him to the car and they asked someone there was this is the
right boy and the answer was he is. And they drove toward money.
And I found out about it 9:30 Sunday morning. I was in bed. I got up, called my mother, and I got the news because I
had every decision I had ever made or every crack that I had ever been in, it took her to get me out of it. And I took that one to mama, too, because I didn't
know what to do. Mother told me to come right over and she would start making calls. And I got over there as quickly as I could make it. And that wasn't very long.
By this time, everyone in Money knew what had happened. Emit Till had broken one of segregation's rules. He talked
fresh to a white woman in a store. He was only 14. He was a northerner and he didn't understand.
He went into the store uh to buy some candy. Before then, he had showed the
boys around his age. He had some picture of some white kids that he had graduated from that was, you know, female and
male. So he told the boys down there, you know, hey, you got around the store must been around about
maybe 10 to 12, you know, youngsters around there, that the girls was his girlfriend, you know. So one of the
local boys said, "Hey, there's a girl in that store there, so I bet you want to go in there and talk to her, you know." So he went in there to, you know, get
some candy. So when he was leaving out the store after buying the candy, he told her, "Say bye, baby."
And the next thing I know, one of the boys came up to me and say,
"Uh, say man, you got a crazy cousin." He just went in there and said bye to
that white woman. And that's when um this man I was playing checker with, this older man, I guess he must have
been around about 60 or 70, he jumped straight up and say, "Boy, say y'all about to get out of here." Say that lady
come out of that store and blow y'all brains up. Wednesday, the the sheriff came and told me they had found the body
at Phillip and wanted me to go and identify the body, which I did. And we
found the body with didn't have on any clothes at all. The body was so badly damaged until we couldn't hardly just tell who he was.
But he happened to have on a ring with his initial and that cleared it up.
The body was shipped home back north to Chicago where my Till Bradley insisted on an open casket funeral. So all the world can see, she said, what they did to my boy.
I am a oh
pilgrim of sorrow
and I'm left In this whole
wide world,
Jet magazine showed Till's corpse, beaten, mutilated, shot through the head. A generation of black people would remember the horror of that photo.
for tomorrow.
I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me. And if the death of my son can mean something to the other unfortunate people all over the world, then for him to have died a hero would mean more to me than for him just to have died.
Roy Bryant, husband of the woman in the store, and JW Milm, her brother-in-law, were arrested for the murder of EMTT Till.
The trial was held in nearby Sumar, Mississippi.
Black organizations like the NAACP and the Black Press were especially interested and they worked hard to keep the case in the news to make an example of southern racism for the world.
It was because it was a boy that they went there.
They had to prove that they were superior.
They had to prove it by taking away a 14year-old boy.
You know, it's in the virus. It's in the blood of the Mississippian. He can't help it.
I'd like for the NAACP or any colored organization any word to know that we are here giving all parties a free trial and intend to give a fair and impartial trial and we don't need to have the NAACP and we don't intend for them to happen.
We never have any trouble until some of our southern [ __ ] go up north and NAACP talks to them and they come back home.
I had covered the courts in many areas of this country, but the teal case was unbelievable. I mean, I just didn't get the sense of being in a courtroom.
It was first place segregated.
The black press sat at a bridge table far off from the uh courtroom and the boy's mother came down. They sat her there at the bridge table with us. Plus the United States Congressman at that time, Diggs, he came down and I was the one that got him in because the sheriff wouldn't let him in. He said to the deputy that he called over, he said, "This [ __ ] here
said, "There's a [ __ ] outside who says that he's a congressman
and he has corresponded with the judge and the judge had told him to come on down and uh he would let him in." He said, "But uh the uh sheriff won't let him in." And so he's sending his card up there. So this guy said,
"A [ ] congressman." And he says, "That's what this [ ] said." So I said, I said, "My god, I have never seen anything like this in my life." There was uh of course a lot of buzzing uh when I entered the uh the place and was placed in that uh area. And I think the judge said something about, "Uh, yeah, have that boy come on up here and sit down over here with these news reporters." You know, what do you intend to do here today?
To answer any questions that might that the attorneys might ask me to answer to the How do you think that how do you think this could possibly be a help to them?
I don't know. I mean, just by answering whatever questions that they ask me.
coffee. Do you have any evidence bearing on this case? I do know that this is my son.
The defense argued that the body found tied to the cotton gin fan in the river was so disfigured that it could not be identified as EMTT till.
The trial took five long, hot days.
Because of threats to his life, the prosecution star witness Moe's Wright was kept hidden out of state.
Will you go back to Mississippi to testify in the kidnap trial?
Sure. Sure. I'll go back because I promised the sheriff I'll be back. And so if I live, I'm going back to testify and uh after after the trial. Well, I'm through Mississippi forever and ever.
Didn't have my part in Mississippi. I'm nothing.
At the time, uh, I really didn't realize, uh, how brave my grandfather Moses Wright was, you know, but, uh, after I got older, I realized that he was a brave man. He was a mighty brave man to travel back down there, you know, among all those host peoples and testify and get him up in court and point his finger at a white man and accuse him of murder. He was called upon to testify as to uh could he see anybody in the courtroom, identify anybody in that courtroom that had come to his house that night and got the uh uh imit out. He stood up and there was a tension in the courtroom and he says in his broken language, "Darhei, Darhei, there he is.
Other black witnesses came forward, too.
Their courage made no difference in Sar, Mississippi. As the trial ended, a defense lawyer told the jury he was quote, "Sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men."
It took the jury an hour to find the men not guilty.
How do you folks feel now that it's all over? Roy, how about you? I'm just glad it's over with.
JW, I am too, Mrs. Bryant. Uh, I feel fine. How about you, Mrs. Mil? Fine. Did you expect this verdict?
Well, I was hoping, boy.
Well, the whole trial was just a farce and but the verdict was was the one that I had expected to be given.
Months later, Roy Bryant and JW Milm told their story of the night of August 28th for $4,000 to reporter William Brford Huey.
Malm was startled at the belligerent attitude or the fact that young Till didn't appear to be afraid of it. He'd gone and gotten him out of bed and had him in the back of a truck and young Till never realized the danger he was in. I'm quite sure that he never thought these two men would kill him. And or maybe he's just in such a strange environment, he doesn't really just doesn't know what he's up against.
And it seems to a rational mind today, it seems impossible that they could have killed him. But JW Milm looked up at me and said, "Well, when he told me about this white girl he had, he says, "My friend, that's what this war is about down here now." He says, "That's what we got to fight to protect." And he says, I just looked at him and I said, "Boy, you ain't going to never see the sun come up again."
For much of southern history, lynching had been an ordinary story.
Race killings were down by the 1950s, but over the years, there had been more than 500 documented lynchings in Mississippi alone.
and the fact that the imit young black man could be found floating down the river in Mississippi as indeed many had been done over the years uh just setting concrete the determination of people to move forward and I think uh we said back there that uh really only God only the books in heaven can know how many negroes have come up missing and dead and killed uh under the system in which we lived.
In Mississippi, a few black people stood up to the system, but it was not enough.
Their challenge was easily beaten back.
3 months later in Alabama, when many stood together, the challenge would be strong.
It started with a woman named Rosa Parks in Montgomery.
Montgomery in 1955 was a typical southern city. We are called the cradle of the Confederacy.
And there is a tradition in Montgomery of having the carrying out the old Confederate South type of things, the stars and bars, flags. It was a totally segregated community. Uh, department stores had white water fountains and colored water fountains. We had separate taxes. You had black taxes and you had white taxes.
And Montgomery, like all of the South, had segregated buses. In interstate buses like this one, and in city buses, the white sat in the front, the blacks in back.
If more whites got on, the blacks had to give them the middle and back seats, too.
On December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger.
The front seats were occupied and left one man, a white man, standing. And then at this point, the driver asked us to stand up and let him have those seats.
And when uh neither none of us moved at his first uh words,
he said, "Y'all make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." And when the policeman approached me,
one of them spoke and asked me if the driver had had asked me to stand. I said, "Yes." He said, "Why don't you stand up?" I said, "I don't think I should have to stand up." And I asked him, I said, "Why do you push us around?" He said, "I do not know, but the law is a law and you're under arrest." Mrs. Parks was formerly my secretary in NACP in the local branch for about 12 years.
She also worked with me when I was state president of NACP.
And she also assisted me in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Carporters.
And uh if there ever ever was a woman who was dedicated to the cause, Rosel Parks for that woman.
This was not the first time a black person had defied the bus segregation in Montgomery.
It was not Mrs. Park's first time. It was her first arrest.
Ed Nixon went to the police station to bail her out. I said, "Mr. pause.
I said, "With your permission, we can break down segregation on the bus with your case." I said, "I'm I'm I'm convinced that uh we can do it." And I said, "If I wasn't convinced, I wouldn't bother you about it." She asked her mother what she thought about it. She said, "I'll go along, Miss Nixon." I asked her husband. He said, "I'll support it. That's fine." Ed Nixon and other black leaders called for a one-day bus boycott. In some cities, it would have been impossible to organize 40,000 people in two days. But Black Montgomery had a core of activists in the Women's Political Council, and they distributed these boycott notices all over the city.
I called every person who was in every school and every place where we had planned to be at that have somebody at that school or wherever it was at a certain time that I would be there with materials for them to disseminate. I didn't go to bed that night. I cut those stencils. I ran off 35,000 copies cuz the bus passed right down in front of my house, you know, and I got up to see it and several buses passed. I was late for work because I was trying to see how many buses was empty and they were totally empty. The one-day boycott was a success.
That night, a mobilized black community turned out for a meeting at the Hol Street Baptist Church and voted unanimously to continue the boycott.
The preachers were preaching as I came in. Uh I was about 2 minutes late coming in and they were preaching and that audience was so on fire uh that they they the preacher would get up and said,
"Do you want your freedom?" And they say, "Yeah, well, I want my freedom. Uh are you for what we're doing?" "Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead." Overwhelmingly, I don't know if there was one vote that said, "No, don't continue." that people wanted to continue that boycott. They had been touched by the persecution, the humiliation that many of them had endured on buses and they voted for it unanimously and that meant thousands of people.
You see, when I first started the fighting, I was fighting to keep so that the children who came behind me wouldn't suffer the same thing I suffered. Then the night of the bus boycott on December the 5th. I told the people that I been fighting like that for all these years. I said tonight I changed my mind. I said, "Hell, I want to enjoy some of this stuff myself." And man, y'all heard people holler.
The keynote speaker at Hol Street Church was a new preacher in town, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was only 26 and was almost unknown outside his own congregation.
King wasn't sure he should accept when his fellow ministers and other leaders asked him to head the new Montgomery Improvement Association and the boycott, but they wanted him in part because he was new in Montgomery.
Rebel King was a young man, very intelligent young man.
He had not been here long enough for the city fathers to put the hand on him.
Martin said, "Well, um, you know, I'm not sure I'm the best person uh for this position since I'm new in the community and uh but if uh if no one else is going to serve, uh, you know, someone has to do it and I'd be glad to I'd be glad to try to do it."
And of course, uh, I guess everybody then assured him they wanted him. So he came home very excited about the fact that he had to give the keynote speech that night at mass meeting. He only had 20 minutes to prepare his speech. We the disinherited of this land.
We who have been oppressed so long are tired of going through the long night of captivity. And now we are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality.
The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is a weapon of protest. That's all.
Suddenly, suddenly this is the glory of America with all of its faults. And we are not wrong.
We are not wrong in what we are doing.
If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong.
If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong.
If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.
We had never seen a crowd like that before. It took 15 minutes before the people would sit down and become quiet and let us begin the meeting. And I can tell you the name of the first song that we sang. It was what a fellowship, what a joy divine leaning on the everlasting arms.
Before the boycott, twothirds of the bus riders were black. After December 5th, there were almost no blacks at the segregated bus stops or on the buses.
They walked and they created a complex system that used private cars to carry thousands of people each day.
We asked for persons who had cars and would voluntarily put them in the transportation pool to let us know and what time they could be used. And in that way, we could know when we would have cars and where they had to go to pick up people. People would call in say I'm out here on Cloverdale Road in such and such a block and I'm I'll be ready at such and such a time. But this was being done all through the day and we would know what time they were supposed to be picked up and where they were. It was really surprising because we thought, well, maybe some of the people would continue to ride the bus. But after all, they had been mistreated and been mistreated in so many different ways until I guess they were tired and they just decided that they just wouldn't ride.
The black community was inspired by its own success.
They held meetings with the mayor and the bus company and found they could stand up to the city commissioners.
At first, we didn't even ask for desegregation. We only asked for a a more humane system of segregation in on the buses. And when the opposition refused to grant that, then we realized that they wouldn't grant anything uh anyway. So, we might as well ask for, you know, complete desegregation.
And that's what we went for. and we realized we had to go for broke, so to speak.
By this time, the boycott had lasted longer than anyone expected.
A wave of violence started. Shots fired at buses, bombs thrown at Martin King's home and Ed Nixon's home.
You've had some rather personal and trying experiences yourself. Are you afraid?
No, I'm not. Uh my attitude is that uh this is a great cause. It is a great issue that we are confronted with and that uh the consequences for my personal life are not particularly important. It is a triumph of the cause that I'm concerned about and I have always felt that uh ultimately along the way of life an individual must stand up and be counted and uh be willing to face the consequences whatever they are and if he is filled with fear uh he cannot do it.
We thought that um you could just shame America.
Uh so now America, look at your promises and look at how you're treating your poor negro citizens. Uh you ought to be ashamed of yourself. But you know, segregate, you can't shame segregation.
You can't uh rattlesnakes don't commit suicide. Ball teams don't strike themselves out. You got to put them out.
The nightly mass meetings in church were the backbone of the boycott.
The mass meetings uh usually were attended by the maids and cooks and janitors and people who uh really use the buses a lot and they would be there singing and praying for hours sometimes before the program actually started. The main part of the mass meeting with the cross of Jesus.
Christ the master.
I just about all of them. It was really very interested in it because you could go and you could learn about so many things that you didn't know exist and so many people would tell you how they were being mistreated and they were glad that they were able to come up and not have to take the same treatments that they once had taken and was afraid to admit.
The fear uh left the fear that had shackled us across the years all left suddenly when we were in that church together.
Dr. Abanathy would speak first usually and uh he had the ability to really make them laugh and maybe make them cry some.
He really knew how to, you know, kind of get them in the mood.
This show is your show.
Not only is this show the show of Negroes in Montgomery, but this is the show of Negroes all over America.
And then I want to go a little further than that and tell you that truly this show is the show of all freedom loving people all over the world.
I guess you call it a kind of folksy quality. He was able to do that because that was a part of his style. Whereas with Martin, he was more um I guess um what you would consider uh formal and um um he uh would come along with with a very thoughtful uh message. Let me urge you to be sane and rational.
Eventually, segregation in public transportation will pass away eventually. And I think we should start now preparing for the inevitable.
And let us when that moment comes, go into the situations that we confront with a great deal of dignity, sanity, and reasonleness. Yeah, it's it's very hard for a ordinary person to describe Reverend King's speaking ability because he was such an outstanding man. He could he could he could make you feel what he was saying as well as hearing what he was saying. He was sincere and dedicated and he could lift you out your seat. You you couldn't you couldn't you couldn't just be quiet. look like it was such a stirring thing that it would affect you.
It just go right through you. So I can't I can't say much more than that but because it such a stimulating thing and he was carried away look like with his own speech. Dr. King spoke with uh a new voice. Not only was it a new movie but it was a new voice that you must love.
You must not hate the people who hate or who act like they hate you. You must and the best thing to make out of your enemy is a friend. So this was had a very profound effect upon not only blacks but whites at this time.
You are not going to permit the NAACP to control your state.
As the boycott entered its second month, the white community's position hardened.
There were whites who were sympathetic to the boycott, but many more were not.
A segregationist group called the White Citizens Council, held huge rallies, and vastly increased its membership, becoming the largest organization in white Montgomery. They targeted anyone, black or white, who supported desegregation.
90% of the white people in Alabama are for segregation. But in the last few years, we have had a quite a number of backsliders, you might say, that for political reasons to further their political ambitions have been trying to garner the negro vote and would do most anything to get that vote. The Citizens Council is out to utterly destroy those people.
The thing that kept the whites going was segregation.
was the old way. Don't break the old way. Don't break this fabric. Don't break down segregation. Don't Don't take this away, this old south. Don't take back the things that we've always known and that we fought a war over these things and that our forefathers would have us do this.
Despite the pressure, the buses remained empty.
The black leaders decided the boycott might weaken if they didn't respond quickly to the violence.
They filed suit in federal court, claiming that bus segregation was unconstitutional.
White officials retaliated by indicting almost 90 black leaders under an old anti-boycott law.
The tactic backfired. Suddenly, the national press was very interested in the story and in the eloquent Martin Luther King Jr., We still feel that we are right and that we stand uh within our constitutional rights uh in the protest and we still advocate nonviolence, passive resistance and still uh determined to use the weapon of love.
Jesus is armed with the weapon of nonviolent resistance, Montgomery's blacks kept walking. Month after month after month
to my extreme on my baby.
How many miles you think you walk? Oh, about seven, eight miles a day.
maybe long further than that because you know going and coming it made a great deal.
Ever tempted to take a ride from Nom no. But if sometime we would be out on the road coming home well it' be a white lady come along and pick us up and car so far and we would thank her for it. We would be very glad and we would offer her pay but she wouldn't take it.
The the strange thing that happened was a kind of a play between uh white women and black women in that the mayor of the town issued an order saying if the white women would just stop carrying the maids back and forth that the boycott would be ended. And so I don't say all of them but some of them replied and said well if he wants to come out and do my cooking and laundry and n the children and uh clean up he can. So the white women went and got them in the car. Uh they said they did it because u the bus had broken down or any excuse you could possibly think of.
I would have to say that there were many sympathetic whites who knew that the system was wrong and they were doing what they could to help to correct it.
Oh yes. When I need him more, Jesus is with me. Jesus is with me.
Oh yeah.
When I You know, a lot of times some of the young whites would come along and they would say, "Uh, [ __ ] don't you know it's better to ride the bus than it is to walk?" And we would say, "No, cracker. No, we were to walk.
April 1956, the boycott was 4 months old.
In other states, lawsuits and black pressure were breaking down bus segregation, but not in Alabama.
We expect the city bus lines of Montgomery and the people of Montgomery to continue to obey all segreg segregation laws as written.
I have this day issued orders to the chief of police and the police department to continue to make arrest in all violations with reference to the segregation laws. Several southern cities, including Richmond, Virginia, Little Rock, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, and others have ended segregation on city buses, and white and negro passengers rode together on Trump seats without incident, mishaps or disturbances.
The public officials of the city of Montgomery and the state of Alabama intend to obey the segregation laws of the city of Montgomery. And we, the Negro citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, do now and will continue to carry on our mass protest.
June 1956, 6 months. There had been boycots before, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 3 years before, even in Montgomery itself, 50 years before. None had lasted so long with so much support.
In Tallahass, Florida, another boycott started. It was so effective that the bus company was forced to shut down operations.
It was clear the boycotts hurt the bus companies, businesses, and the cities.
It was not clear if they could end segregation.
September 1956, nine months, the clan in Montgomery held a series of highly visible rallies.
They want to throw white children and colored children into the melting pot of integration through out of which will come a conglomerated blood mongle class of people. Both races will be destroyed in such a movement.
Many in the black community were frightened but they kept walking. 10 months, 11 months.
The boycott's second Christmas was approaching. Downtown stores were hurt, but neither the city nor the marchers would compromise.
On November 13th, 1956, the US Supreme Court broke the deadlock, ruling unanimously that Montgomery's bus segregation was unconstitutional.
That day, the Kucks clan rode and walked the black neighborhoods again.
This time, the blacks just watched, unmoved and unafraid.
The decision rendered by the Supreme Court yesterday was a victory, but it wasn't a victory for colored folks. Don't Don't make that victory that small. It wasn't a victory for 50,000 Negroes of Montgomery. It wasn't merely a victory for 16 million Negroes of America. That was a victory for justice and goodwill.
Now, what will be our mode of action in the light of this decision?
After thinking through this question very seriously, the executive board of the Montgomery Improvement Association recommends that the 11 month old protest against the city buses will be called off and that the negro citizens of Montgomery, Alabama will return to the buses on a nonsegregated basis.
Are you ready for the question?
All in favor, let it be known by standing on your feet.
It seems that it is carried unanimously
because you get to understand that God is with you, that God can take care of you, and that this is God's way, and you are there to do it. And I think that's a sense of drive. That's what many people don't understand about what happened back in the deep south that that here I am.
that this is my duty. I've got to do something and God is with me. And if God is with me, how can you lose leaning on the everlasting arm?
Oh, what a beautiful city.
Oh, what a beautiful city.
Oh, what a beautiful city to gate to the city.
Hallelujah.
When the bus boycott was over, the people just the blacks got on the bus to sit on the front seat just to just just to just to show home. And they had a lot of fun sitting on the front seat riding riding to to the college or riding away from the college. Nobody sat in the back then cuz all of them sat on the front. It was It was a jubilation.
It was a joy.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. What a beautiful
Oh, what a beautiful city to the city.
Hallelujah. We had won self-respect.
We had forced the white man to give what we knew was a part of our own citizenship. Uh and so we had won that.
And if you have never had the feeling to feel that this is not the other man's country and you are an alien in it, but that this is your country too, then you don't know what I'm talking about. But it is a a hilarious feeling that just goes all over you that makes you feel that America is a great country and we're going to do more to make it greater.
Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on.
Origin of the phrase "eyes on the prize" linked to:
Frederick Douglass' views on freedom, agitation, and demands for justice.
His quote about struggles against oppression.
Personal narrative involving a 14-year-old boy, Emmett Till, who was murdered in Mississippi:
Highlighted the vulnerability of Blacks in society.
The impact of Till's death on the civil rights movement.
Uncle Moses Wright testified against the murderers, showcasing courage against oppression.
In the fight for freedom, many felt they had nothing to lose, motivating them to take risks.
Civil rights years were marked by collaborative efforts between Black and White activists.
Integration advocates faced resistance in securing rights:
Segregation was a pervasive system in America.
Black Americans experienced significant discrimination.
Examples of injustices faced due to segregation, including violence and intimidation from groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
The influential role of organizations like the NAACP in advocating for equality.
World War II changed perceptions as Black soldiers returned with new perspectives on freedom and equality.
The Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education challenged segregation laws.
Black communities began to mobilize following the Brown decision, seeking to assert their rights.
Courageous actions, such as those taken by Mo Wright, were pivotal in sparking further activism.
The 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott was initiated by Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat.
The boycott was supported by the Black community, leading to widespread participation and activism.
Martin Luther King Jr. became a prominent leader during the boycott, emphasizing nonviolent resistance and justice.
Ongoing violence and opposition faced by activists, highlighting the risks involved in the struggle for civil rights.
The importance of community gatherings and meetings in organizing and sustaining the movement.
The boycott eventually led to the Supreme Court ruling, deeming bus segregation unconstitutional.
The end of the boycott marked a significant victory for civil rights and the beginning of many changes in the struggle for equality.