Advancing “dis-ease”

In 1963 at the time of the March on Washington, I was leading a week-long Conference of High School youth; Sylvia was also on the leadership team. She led three campers to join the March, and of course they came back with exciting reports, and full of hope. My greater involvement was demanded, and when the specific opportunity came that fall, I was eager. Tiny Williamston, North Carolina was the scene of an SCLC effort to organize the black community to gain certain rights they were denied by whites. I knew that a delegation of whites from Boston had gone there to support the movement. A November phone call from Valerie Russell asking that I join two other local ministers to go to Williamston, where they needed people willing to be arrested, go to jail, and thereby “clog” both jail and courts in the little community. Of course I could not deny Valerie. .

Williamston was a good experience for me, but not one to which I contributed much. It raised for me serious questions about the involvement of those who were white. Our quarters were in a small black church on the outskirts of town, just beyond where the paved road ceased. Strangers to the town were readily identified, so everyone knew who the “outside agitators” were. We were housed in private homes, escorted there each night for rest; assigned during the day to visit black homes, urging people to vote, to register to vote, and to join a boycott of selected white businesses. My understanding had been that we were to be involved in actions which would lead to arrest, following a proven strategy of “clogging” the jails and courts so that the system could not work. The change in strategy was not something I had any place or right to challenge, but I wondered about it, and there was never an explanation. I found myself very uneasy asking black residents to engage in efforts which were likely to put them at risk, while the risk to me was nothing. I could leave town at any time, going home to security; their jobs, their homes, perhaps their lives were at risk.

During the day hours in Williamston, we were each assigned a black person to guide us through the small shopping area to the parts of town where we were to work.
There was concern that any of us at any moment might be forced into an alley where men with electric cattle prods were ready to greet us. My guide was a young man in his late teens, whom I remember as “T.C.”. He walked me through town, stepping between me and any cars which might swerve toward me as we crossed the street. It was a local form of intimidation by angry whites, T.C. told me. I found more frightening than that the “hate stares” encountered as we passed nicely dressed white mothers on their shopping routines. “Frightening” because it represented an intensity of hate I had not seen before, nor since.

After only a few days in Williamston, as we sat in the church, a neighbor rushed in, announcing that Dr. King had been shot! That was shortly changed, to clarify that it was President Kennedy, and not Dr. King who had been shot, and was dead. I was in the church kitchen, having coffee with “T.C.”. We wept, and today I remember the anguish in that young black man’s voice as he turned to me, almost as if hope had left his heart. The assassination essentially brought our efforts to a halt. No one knew how the white community would respond locally. A car full of men drove up and down the street, passing the church, with rifles pointed at the building. Would the response be that guns and shooting was the way to solve the problem? Would a more cautious white leadership prevail?

Soon negotiations led to a group of white and black people, from the town, meeting with a couple of representatives from our “outsiders”. Nothing was going to happen in Williamston for days, it was clear. It was approaching December, and my job at home demanded that I return to complete plans for fifteen summer youth conferences which had to be announced, and for which recruiting must start that month. So I was put on a bus and came home. “T.C.” assured me there would be no concern, people would all know I was headed out of town.

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