Freedom in the Family

by Tananarive Due

  At the time, the NAACP’s competition for high school students was new, but it gathered quick momentum because of the vigorous energy of its founder, pioneering Chicago newspaper columnist Vernon Jarrett, who has a deep love for young people. Jarrett, with his salt-and-pepper hair and high expectations, believed that young scholars should be celebrated for their achievements in the arts and sciences just as athletes were celebrated on the football field and basketball court.

  The awards ceremony took my breath away. I had never seen anything like the energetic procession of young people behind their cities’ banners as they marched into the auditorium to the cheers of their parents, chaperones, and friends. Reading winners’ names with a dramatic timbre as the trumpets in “Fanfare for the Common Man” pealed majestically from speakers, Jarrett made all of us feel as if we were Olympians. I had won contests before, but never on a national level, and I won my first national prize at ACT-SO that summer of 1980: a gold medal in essay writing. I was greeted by pioneering scholar Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, the son of former slaves who grew up to become the dean of Howard University’s school of religion and the president of Morehouse College.8 Dr. Mays handed me my prize. I was also greeted by historian Lerone Bennett Jr., author of Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619–1962, so I stood between two great figures in black history. My heart, which had been so battered by crises, soared.

  To this day, when I hear Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” with its booming timpani drums and unforgettable trumpet salute, my memory takes me back to those grand ACT-SO award ceremonies at NAACP conventions. Nowadays, those ACT-SO ceremonies are televised nationally, although they were not when I was a teenager. But I didn’t need the eyes of a national television audience on me. Those processionals were the proudest moments of my young life.

  Even more important, my participation in the ACT-SO competition over the next three years gave me the opportunity to meet other young blacks in Miami and from all over the country. They knew about the NAACP, and just as I was dedicating more and more of my time to my writing, they were pursuing their own dreams of becoming scientists, singers, orators, photographers, chemists, inventors, leaders. I met a brilliant student from Miami Central High School, Ivan Yaeger, who invented a bionic arm for his ACT-SO project! (I always knew Ivan was special, and in 2001, he was featured in People magazine because he had modified the invention he first built in high school to give a young girl who was missing an arm the chance to live an easier life.)

  During the time that I might have felt the most despairing because racial politics in Miami were so explosive, ACT-SO constantly reinforced in me that the next generation was ready to take on the challenges of the post–civil rights era. The world would be ours to conquer. Although I did not develop close personal relationships with many of my fellow ACT-SO competitors, I felt the glow of their ambitions and talents. I felt the glory of their company. At ACT-SO, I never felt alone or afraid.

  To me, the words of James Weldon Johnson’s great anthem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” were a rallying cry. Especially after the Arthur McDuffie riots—the event that demonstrated to me how far there was yet to go—I sang those words with renewed, near-fevered emotion at the NAACP gatherings: Let us march on ’til victory is won.

  Nine

  PATRICIA STEPHENS DUE

  “Tomorrow is now.”

  —Eleanor Roosevelt

  There was no time for rest once we got out of jail in 1960.

  We were released on May 5 to a hero’s welcome among Tallahassee’s Negroes, who staged a rally in our support. “Jail was an opportunity for us,” I said to reporters as we were leaving the jail. “We had the time to think, to renew our faith in America and the power of nonviolence, to rededicate ourselves to the task of ending discrimination.”1

  As William Larkins explained to a Jet magazine reporter less than two hours after he was free, “All of us felt we were doing the right thing. We had a feeling of righteousness which didn’t make us feel bad about going to jail. Some people—our parents—were very concerned, but staying in jail was the easiest thing for us to do. We didn’t mind being cut off from society for a principle. We just wanted to get out and participate in more sit-ins,” he said.2 Even John Broxton’s first haircut was considered newsworthy after our release, because the Pittsburgh Courier ran a photograph showing him sitting thoughtfully in a barber’s chair, sporting a moustache and goatee in addition to his ample head of hair. The bespectacled barber, a Tallahassee man named Parker Hollis, had formerly been convicted on charges stemming from the Tallahassee bus boycott in the late-1950s, so they were two brothers in our struggle.3

  Much to our disappointment, however, our jailing had not brought about real changes in Tallahassee. The city’s lunch counters were still segregated, and Negroes were still second-class citizens. To further set back the clock, Gov. Collins’s term had ended, and C. Farris Bryant, a firm segregationist, was the new governor of Florida. None of the jailed students were technically students at FAMU any longer because we had missed forty-nine days of classes, so we had all been asked to withdraw from school and re-enroll for the fall term. We were also on university probation. CORE leaders and FAMU students had retreated from further direct action, deciding to concentrate on the boycott instead.

  Around the nation, the civil rights movement was taking root, especially the student movement. In April, while we were in jail, several delegations of student leaders had met in Raleigh, North Carolina, and formed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC. The group was an outgrowth of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, influenced by Nashville sit-in veterans such as Jim Lawson, a Vanderbilt Divinity School student and pacifist well-schooled in the philosophies of Gandhi, and Fisk University undergraduates Diane Nash and Marion Barry (who was elected SNCC’s first president).4 During this time, many students, myself included, believed that the court-oriented tactics of the older NAACP were not the entire answer; we needed more direct action. We were tired of waiting for change. And the Tallahassee students were ready to take our story to the nation.

  Despite Mother’s earlier nervousness about the time we had spent in jail, she allowed me and Priscilla to take part in a national publicity tour scheduled by CORE to bring attention to what had happened in Tallahassee—but only if she could chaperone us. We went home to Belle Glade for only a few days of rest, then began a tour that lasted most of the summer.

  “It’s like being in the oven and then going into the ice,” Priscilla later said, describing how it felt to travel throughout the North relating our story to sympathetic audiences. Instead of being “niggers,” we were now treated like young dignitaries from a backward, foreign place. And I suppose that was true, in some ways, since people outside the South seemed so uninformed. We were welcomed and celebrated.

  Reading comments from other Tallahassee CORE activists in history books today, I now understand that there was some jealousy about the attention Priscilla and I got that summer, since we spent more time touring than the others. I think some observers may have misunderstood our enthusiasm during that tour, believing we’d been diverted by the so-called “glamorous” life in the public eye. I never saw it that way. I saw myself as a witness to injustice and a storyteller, trying hard to get the word out. I truly believed—as I believe today—that information is powerful and that events should be documented. That’s why I was able to tolerate such a hectic pace: Some days we had a breakfast speech in one state, a luncheon speech in another, and then an evening church meeting in a third. “What city is this?” I remember asking before a speech in Chicago. We never saw much of any of the cities except the airport and perhaps a hotel. Mother stayed with us a month, but then she couldn’t take the pace anymore, and we were on our own.

  Originally, all of the jail-in participants were divided up, sent to different regions. Barbara Broxton went to Watertown, New York, where she made an emotional address to the annual meeting of Woolwor
th stockholders, including the company president, after leading a picket line outside of the building. “We will fight because we are right,” Barbara, in her prim dress, told the meeting. She was a striking presence. “I’ve been to jail, and I’m willing to go back if necessary.”5 Based on Barbara’s presence, several stockholders introduced a resolution supporting the desegregation of all Woolworth counters, both in the North and South. (Apparently, Woolworth’s sales had already dropped 9 percent since the February sit-ins throughout the South).6 William Larkins went to the Midwest, appearing on Chicago television and addressing various civic groups.

  Priscilla and I went to Chicago, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Ann Arbor, and probably a dozen or more other cities during our tour, garnering much needed press coverage almost wherever we went. We weren’t only telling our story to the people who actually came to see us speak—which, in most cases, was preaching to the choir—but countless others who read about our appearances in newspapers. “We might be expelled from school and we might not be able to find jobs in Florida, but they can’t stop us,” I told the Washington Post during one stop.7 Naturally, our appearances also served as a fund-raising mechanism for CORE, which was a cash-strapped organization struggling to find its own place among better-known civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and Dr. Martin Luther King’s SCLC. Despite their similar goals, we came to learn that these organizations had rivalries. At one point, a high SCLC official took me and Priscilla aside and told us that CORE was only using us and that we should join his organization instead. But Priscilla and I never got caught up in that kind of thinking. We wanted to be effective, period, and CORE had been the first organization to present a plan of action we believed would enable us to carry out our goals. In the years to follow, I would work with several other groups, including the SCLC, SNCC, and NAACP. Affiliation wasn’t nearly as important to me as commitment.

  I will never forget several moments during that publicity tour, especially the warmth and interest of the people we came in contact with. We spoke in Harlem at the great Rev. Adam Clayton Powell’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, the oldest Negro Baptist church in New York City, and Rev. Powell gave us scholarships to help us defray school costs. We had the pleasure of taking part in programs with Ezell Blair Jr., the very polite young man who had been one of the original Greensboro sit-in participants. I met John H. Johnson, the president of the Newspaper Publishers Association (and the publisher of Ebony magazine) when I addressed the publishers’ banquet in Chicago. I met a New York attorney, Jeff Greenup, who helped present a $1,000 check on behalf of the social action committee of Grace Congregational Church; I could not know it then, but Attorney Greenup would come to Florida to volunteer his legal expertise and represent arrested activists in years to come. We were invited to a reception hosted by Harry Belafonte at his New York City apartment; I was told Belafonte had once been denied the opportunity to rent an apartment in the building because of his interracial marriage, so he had bought the building instead. At that party, I met the writer James Baldwin, who was very quiet and unimposing. A. Philip Randolph, the great labor organizer, was also there. I have never been one to feel starstruck after meeting celebrities, but I was very proud to see how involved they were. We had a unifying cause.

  On June 20, we attended a fund-raising luncheon hosted by Eleanor Roosevelt at the Plaza Hotel in New York; Mrs. Roosevelt had sent out a letter encouraging patrons to attend by describing our jail-in: Such courage deserves our admiration and respect, she wrote. More than that, it gives every one of us confidence in the future of our country. Her example tells us that nothing will stop the winning of full equality for all our citizens so long as girls like Patricia are prepared to make such a sacrifice.8 The former First Lady was elegant and very friendly toward us. Priscilla and I appeared at the luncheon with a white Florida State University student, Robert Armstrong, and the three of us reenacted the sit-in and the ridiculous trial, playing different characters such as hecklers, judge, and prosecutor. As always, our audience was very surprised to hear how freely the word “nigger” had been used during a legal proceeding. Daisy Bates, who had coordinated the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Jackie Robinson also attended that luncheon. I’m certain a lot of money was raised that day. I remember people asking me at that luncheon, “My goodness, aren’t you nervous?” I kept saying, “Oh, no, I’m not nervous,” but sure enough, I suffered an upset stomach and ended up in the bathroom.

  That was a whirlwind summer, and it was very trying. I’m grateful to this day for a young man named Phaon Goldman, who was on the executive committee of the District of Columbia branch of the NAACP and was charged with our care for the evening we were in Washington. He was one of the few people, at the time, who seemed to view us simply as people and not larger-than-life figures. He had a much needed party for the visiting activists and told us, “Let’s just pause for a while,” because he knew how tired we were. At the time, it meant a lot to us.

  It also meant a lot to us that CORE awarded the five jail-in students, including me and Priscilla, its Gandhi Award. Presented by activist Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker at CORE’s annual convention in St. Louis on June 29, 1960, the award read, “The five leaders have borne abuse and contumely with restraint and dignity. They have maintained a spirit of goodwill and understanding. They have not swerved from the objective of equal rights for all.”9

  But our work was far from over. Only a few months after my release from a jail cell in Leon County, I was on my way to jail again—this time in Miami.

  In April, Miami’s biracial committee had brokered an agreement among major department stores and five-and-dimes—Woolworth, Kress, McCrory’s, Grant, Burdines, Richard’s, Jordan Marsh, and Sears Roebuck—to allow integrated seating at food counters. That group included Rev. Theodore Gibson, president of the Miami branch of the NAACP, Miami CORE Project Director Dr. John O. Brown, and Rev. Edward Graham, president of the Ministerial Alliance.10

  But by the end of that summer, Miami was still far from integrated. When Priscilla and I returned to Miami for CORE’s Interracial Action Institute, we were no longer curious young newcomers but tested veterans. The three-week workshop met in August, again at the Sir John Hotel, and although most of us there were college students, participants were as young as seventeen and as old as seventy-five. Even my younger brother, Walter, attended the workshop, encouraged by his big sisters’ example. That workshop really opened his eyes, he told me later.

  The first phase of the institute was the testing of lunch counters. We tested forty eating places and were served in only twenty-three.11 One place that steadfastly refused to serve Negroes in its dining room despite a high number of Negro patrons was Shell’s City Supermarket, billed as the “World’s Largest Supermarket.” It was right on Seventh Avenue in Liberty City, in the heart of one of Miami’s ironically named Negro neighborhoods, so it became a focal point for picketing and sit-in demonstrations. Priscilla and I, of course, were eager to take part in more demonstrations, but I remember that I did not want Walter to participate with us because I thought he would be too protective of us, which might lead to a confrontation.

  Priscilla and I were among eighteen demonstrators who sat-in at Shell’s City on a Wednesday afternoon, August 17, and waited for service. When our interracial group first sat down, the manager said, “Can’t you see the waitresses are busy?” A half hour passed with no service, and then the police came. We were all escorted out of the restaurant, our names and addresses were recorded, and we were informed that we had been placed under arrest.

  I honestly don’t remember how much time we spent in jail in Miami. The CORE newsletter listed our trial date as August 26, so if we stayed in jail until then, we spent nearly ten days there. However, in 1963 I told a St. Petersburg Times reporter that I had spent five days in jail before the trial. Either way, Priscilla and I were once again in a jail cell for trying to be served food just like any other paying c
ustomer. I’m sure Mother was worried again about us, but our second jailing was not nearly as surprising as the first for her. She understood our dedication much better by then. In fact, I remember her telling me how irritated she was that she had a friend who continued to buy her liquor from Shell’s City despite our arrest there.

  At our trial, the judge told me and Priscilla that we were on probation for one year, and as long as we didn’t get into any more trouble, the arrest would not remain on our records. I’m sure I was thinking, Well, as long as discrimination exists in Florida, I’m sure this won’t be the last time I get in trouble. But I didn’t say so then.

  Days after the trial, at the Interracial Action Institute, I had the opportunity to meet Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who came to give talks during the August 31 and September 1 sessions.12 Dr. King was a slender, unassuming man dressed in a casual white short-sleeved shirt and dark slacks. While he spoke with great assuredness, we were told he had a cold, and consequently he was not able to attend all of the workshop sessions. The most lasting impression he made on me after my first encounter with him was that he seemed very tired, as I am sure he was.

  Priscilla recalls another incident involving Dr. King some time later, when she was attending a gathering of activists in Pennsylvania. “I went to Mahalia Jackson’s room and Dr. King was lying on the sofa sleeping. She said, ‘Don’t wake him.’ She called him ‘Black Jesus,’ or ‘Black Moses’ or something. I remember how they would put him on a pedestal,” she told me. To her, it seemed strange, because she was accustomed to relating to Dr. King as a person, a fellow soldier—yes, I had Dr. King’s personal telephone number in those days, and I called him from time to time when I was in Atlanta—and the way others treated him bothered us. Priscilla was very aware of the idea that if she was not careful, the adulation of others might change her idea of who she believed she was. She did not want to lose sight of her goals, and we certainly never did anything because we hoped to see ourselves in the newspapers or so that people would treat us differently.