LAY MY BURDEN DOWN, Part 1

[Music] from any the National Educational Tele. What do you want? >> I didn't hear you. What do you want? >> What do you want? >> When do you want it? >> Now. >> When do you want it? >> All right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy. Now, make Selma, Alabama, a better city. Now is the time. Transform Alabama, the heart of Dixie, to a state with a heart for brotherhood and peace and goodwill. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all across. [Music] In March of 1965, thousands of Americans from all over the country gathered in Selma, Alabama. They marched 54 miles to the state capital in Montgomery to dramatize the extent of racial injustice in that state and throughout all the deep south. >> So I say, walk together, children. >> Don't you get weary. There's a great camp meeting in the promised land. Alabama will be a new Alabama and I will be a new America. >> Turn me around. Turn me around. Turn me around. They going to let the turn me around. [Music] >> 3 months after the march, Congress passed and President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To those who marched and those who joined them in spirit, it looked as if the southern Negro was on his way at last toward achieving equality with the whites. >> More than a year after the march had ended, we took our cameras back to Alabama to find out what progress the Negro had made in the region where over 200 years ago he took up his heavy burden. NE Journal presents Lay My Burden Down. A look at the life today of the southern rural Negro. [Music] This is Selma, where the march began. There have been some small changes since the march. There has been token integration of schools, and Negroes have registered, voted, and run in this year's elections. But the Negro is still an outsider. He's excluded from the social, political, and economic life of the community. There are no negro policemen, no negroes on the board of education, none at city hall except the janitor. And though incidents involving the police are down, Negroes still complain of frequent harassment and discrimination. [Music] And Negroes who had expected more from the march seemed tired and disillusioned. Many other people felt that there would be some changes, dramatic changes made. Well, the jobs that that available to people are said they've been going through all the time is during the white folks dirty work. There have been no jobs created. A lot of people out of jobs. You find more people out of work now than it did before then for the demonstration. There are few jobs and many in the city and on the farms are going hungry. In Selma and Dallas County alone, almost half the negro population, 14,000 people, are receiving surplus government food. While for whites, business is booming. And >> everything here is setting records. We had the biggest year in ' 64 that we ever had. Uh I mean in ' 65 6465 was the biggest it was a record year in all areas. Our city set records in sales and sales tax revenues in building permits issued and the growth of our city all during this so-called terrible year and the blight of Silma. We had a good city and people that come down here saw it. But the the country was more interested in the the hysteria and the publicity that went out of here. that this was confined to an area. It's more true today than ever. The the people are so caught up in progress and growth. We've got good negro people here and good white people here. This is a good community. The colored people themselves will tell you today there's no place they would rather live than Selma, Alabama in Dallas County. But prosperity and growth are still for whites only, especially in the countryside where the majority of Negroes still live untouched by the gains made by others in the last 12 years. Wealth comes from the ownership of land, and the Negro has rarely owned it. He's only worked it for the white man as a sharecropper or tenant. Unable to make a living off it, 3 million Negroes have left the South since 1940. But more than 5 million still remain tied to the land and a system which has kept them poor and in debt. [Music] [Music] The negro still depends on the white man for everything. He lives in a shack given him by the white man and must borrow for food, fertilizer, and seed. He is prey to traveling sets he does not need and cannot afford. And at the end of the year, after he's paid his debt to the white man, the negro is left with very little. The per capita income of southern Negroes is less than $1,000 a year. [Music] And though large families are an asset in farming, they can be an economic burden until the children are old enough to work. [Music] [Music] The burden begins at birth. Unable to afford a hospital, most Negroes are born in the same shacks as their parents. delivered by a midwife who though cheaper than a hospital still costs $20. [Music] [Music] [Music] Happy. [Music] [Music] Large families are common among rural Negroes, but so is infant mortality, which is twice as high among Negro babies as white. One of the highest mortality rates in the nation. [Music] [Music] [Music] And those born into a black world soon learn what it's like to survive in one that's point. >> If you just don't understand the connection that we have with the color people. In other words, we we work with them and they work with us. And we not going to take him and push him off somewhere just because we could do it. >> You tell these people. That's what I've been telling them right here. >> Had we been your friends for years? >> Yes, sir. >> Had we worked more of than anybody in this country? >> Yes, sir. Sure. Sure have. >> Right. You got hung and we give you something to eat on Bill. >> Yes, sir. >> And his name. >> That's right. Now, but these are weather, right? >> How about him, Bill? >> Yes, sir. >> That name Isabelle. I >> think that name came down name Isabelle. >> Yes, sir. >> Billy weather. >> Yes, sir. >> I think everybody know that well. >> Yes, sir. How many people it is in Pine Hill tonight at 12:00 you could go ask them for help. They wouldn't help you. I mean I I am but >> if you got in trouble who' you go to the white or the black >> tell the truth now that vehicle put them on the spot so there ain't no color folks in you don't want damn bad right by itself. >> But is it anybody here that wouldn't help you do it? >> No. We uh have always got along fine with the [ __ ] We never mistreated them and there's no complaints and they are all happy. Right. All color can get ahead if he's willing to pay the price. >> Yes sir. >> The price is willing to do out a lot of things you think you got to have and work like the dicker. Frugality and hard work may pay off for some Americans, but not if you're black, a farmer, and live in the South. >> These are the Johnson's, typical of the rural negro living in the Selma area. Their daily lives have remained unchanged since the march. Like most negroes, they don't own the land. They rent it. They have seven children. >> All of them live in a two- room shack which Mr. Johnson built himself. They have no plumbing, no telephone, no TV or radio, no automobile. And while some negro tenant farmers in 20th century America have wells and some have pumps, the Johnson's have neither and must haul their water from a quarter mile away. [Applause] in there with both of them there at the same time. That cold again. Oh yeah. [Music] They must borrow to live and live in constant debt. They owe for food, fertilizer, and seed, and have $200 in doctor bills they are struggling to pay. They grow some food for themselves, but hunger is a constant in their lives. Too many mouths and too little money. Mrs. Johnson does the best she can and tries to take it all philosophically. >> Things is tough if you don't have enough food for them either way. You know, they have to go hungry and we won't have nothing much to feed them off of. Most of the negro farmers around here, they all has the same trouble. You have to have faith, you know, in the Bible, you know, for things to be better. Read it. read the Bible. And then by reading the Bible, you got to mean what you say when you read the Bible. And and uh and then if you ask him and read the Bible and mean what you say, well, he ain't just going to come down for the view and bring it down here to you. But still, you got to have faith. You know, of course, he ain't coming down and just bring it to you just like a natural man. But if you mean what you say, probably it might be a way home for you. >> Walter Johnson is the only one of six sons to remain on the farm. The rest have gone north. He farms 9 acres of cotton and corn with his father, Champion Johnson, who spent a lifetime 71 years behind the plow. Champion doesn't have much to show for. Small mule farmers never do. >> I ain't never been able to run no great big farm. Nothing but, you know, mule farm like that. Just like I'm running now and it don't one farm I mean little farm like that they don't never make nothing and if you go on a farm you're supposed to get up and go to field every morning and then that you have to borrow some money to run this farm with it is uh buy food clothes line one thing whatsoever it takes sometime you have to buy old mule or anything you have to buy say that you have to buy but you don't get money enough to to buy what you need and after that that told you waiting out there you fix some and you didn't made none and you got to start brand new next year. That's the way that run. You can see the situation. You tell about what a fought to have when you see the situation. >> The situation show about what he got. For 25 years, the US Agriculture Department has provided lowcost loans for the small farmer unable to get money elsewhere. But this program is run by white southerners and benefits mostly the white farmer. Champion Johnson believes it's easier for a white man to get a loan than it is for him. But I know it is either. Yeah. No, I ain't had no way to pay it back. They want to let me have that much. But they take a chance on him. That's that's the way I see. >> Well, they they can get over to what I can't. That was what make it look like to me like that. I can't borrow but oh well I can used to couldn't I used to couldn't get no more than $50 to make a farm with and they figured that was too much. Like most negro farmers, Walter Johnson cannot make a living from the farm alone. So he digs ditches 5 days a week and farms on weekends. But digging ditches, like other jobs open to Alabama negroes, doesn't pay well. And so even with the additional income, life is rough for the Johnson's. You don't be able to buy them something to eat and uh buy them clothes and shoes or whatever they need all at the same time. It's tough if you can't get on to no food. It's tough if you have a job and ain't making nothing to get none. I think it's tough for W. If you had a chance to change things, what would you want? >> Well, I would want my chair with clothes and shoes and plenty of food for me. and put down some money if I had it for sickness. Anything like that, I have to take it to the doctor. Things like that used for if I just had to go someplace and I wouldn't have to worry other people so much. But Mrs. Johnson knows of the risks of farming and the chance of failure. >> Farming is a gamble. And some of the years you make pretty good and some of the years you don't make nothing. Just go clean out of business. >> Well, stay like it is now. You know, you going to have nothing to start with. But bad year come along and uh rain spill or dry spill. Sometime it rain too much and sometime it be too dry just like a dry night. >> That's all right. But stay hot and dry. You won't make nothing. You know nothing grow when you're hot and dry like this. [Music] When the wells dry up, dragged by mule and an old wooden sled from this spring about a mile from their house. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] What the [ __ ] Put the top on. [Music] [Music] Oh jeez. [Applause] Whoa. Come on. That's all. [Applause] Get over there. Come on. [Applause] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Applause] I know what y'all don't have. Throw it away. Got a giant thing. [Music] [Applause] Yeah, you got M Oh, you got M open rig down here too. Missed all my other things down this thing. Time to throw it away. Let me tell you this. One coming [Music] [Applause] [Music] out. might. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Yes, he will. Yes, he will. Yes, he will. Yes, he will. Yes, he will. Yes, he will. I love the Lord. [Music] [Applause] >> Yeah, he will. >> If you ain't ain't living in the right way and and uh pray to him and ain't meaning what you say, well, you still stay in that same tough. You don't mean what you say. He figure you don't mean what you say and and you don't be wanting to honor nothing. You steal a beard. >> To continue farming, the negro farmer must break out of a cycle of debt. He needs technical advice and the money to improve his farm. Neither banks nor government programs give him the help he needs. So, he must rely on himself and his family. But the cost is high. As soon as he's old enough, the boy goes behind the plow when he should be in school. Walter Jr., 15 years old, misses more than a month of school each year. His grades are poor, his job future bleak. White school officials do not enforce negro attendance. And many negroes think they don't really care. >> I'm going to tell you reason. The white folks don't tell us to go to school and see to us going to school. If you learn yourself some sense, you going to be just a little notch ahead of them. They always stays two years ahead of us. when we get where they add the two more Yhead and so out all you do let's try if you don't be able to send them a card you some of them don't finish school out in the towel to get that can't spell expressing the 12th grade can't spell express and they turn them loose out there but nothing for that you go ahead and try to get it and the only way these children could get it is by us sticking out of us neck helping these kids when these Kid get to the 12th grade. I said they got enough. If you have to lick dirt for your children, don't go steal them. Now, if you have to lick dirt for your children, wash your clothes at night if they want them education, get it. Anybody can be nobody, but everybody can't be somebody. >> Even when these children do go to school, their education is still second rate. There's been hardly any integration in the rural south and it's been 12 years since the Supreme Court ordered southern schools desegregated. Negroes complain of lack of federal enforcement and the continued entransigence of southern whites. >> What's the objection around here to negate children in white school? >> Well, just that very thing that no morals whatever that's the biggest job and most of the negroes don't want to go to white schools. Now that's the truth of the whole thing. If it was left to them, if they wouldn't somebody wasn't paying them to start it, they wouldn't do it. >> It's all torn up inside and it ain't got the things that the children should have inside of the school, you know, and this need repairing and fixing. It's it's not a good school. Needs good places for to have to go. They ain't got it. And then the teacher is too scared to to let people go inside and look at it cuz it's it's it's awful. It's not a good school. [Music] >> The negro teachers owe their jobs to white superintendents, so they rarely fight for the needs of the children. The parents of some of the children at this school took us there to show us the conditions. However, the teachers got scared and called the sheriff who tried to stop us from filming and Mr. Kelly called me and asked me to come over here to keep these people off of the school ground during school hours. >> Yes. Then if you slap school out they gone and it's all right if they going to come back take pictures but they want to do all but said during school he said that the federal judge has ruled just lately that anybody not come on the school ground and interfere with the school while it's in session. >> Well that's that's all the officers right here they sign this thing here. >> Could I ask you all right >> the information please? >> All right. Uh if the the mothers and father of the children wanted the picture taken could they stand out doors and take the picture stand their own children out >> that's what I >> Yeah Lord >> stand my chance my hand take the picture but I'd really do you want these people taking all these pictures >> well uh it's you know it's so I mean me if if this is not going to hurt us >> now you don't know what's going to you don't know what they going to say you don't going what you going? >> No, I'm not going to say if not >> it's not going to do you any good. I'll tell you now. >> Yes, sir. >> No, it's not. >> Will it do us in the home? >> Will it do us in the home? >> Might I don't know. >> Might not do in the harm. I don't. But they they don't want you in the feel of this school while the school's in now. When school's out, children going home, want to come back and take some pictures. That's all right. But why school is in session? through the session now. >> Yeah. >> How's it going to do any harm, Sheriff? >> I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about >> How's it going to do these people any harm? >> I don't know. >> Well, why do you why do you say it might do harm? >> I I've never seen it do any good. >> What do you think of the school? Let me ask you. >> I I think it could be improved. >> You think so? >> Yeah. >> What could you do for it? >> I can't do nothing because >> What do you think ought to be done for? I just think they ought to pick them up at good school that if they're not satisfied with it, but they seem to be satisfied with going to lose and lose on a Saturday night. I put my right hand in. I take my right hand out. I give my right. >> It's no schooling. There's not enough chairs to go around. No plumbing, no books, no blackboards, >> nothing for the teachers to work with. [Music] [Applause] >> I put my rifle in. I take my rifle out. I give my rightful shake shake shake and turn my body. Never going to lose to lose. Going to lose to lose a bad night. I put my left foot in. I take my left foot out. I give my left foot shake shake shake and turn my body. Lose are on a Saturday night. I put my big head in. I take my head out. >> Most of them are runners. They're cash runners. Now, some of them do all right, but might a few of them can get out and >> kept poor and illiterate, most rural Negroes must still depend on land owners like Mars Tate. >> Wake up pretty regular sometimes, but they they have to wake home in the crop and they need them. But when I send for them to say unload a truckload of fertilizer or something, I don't have any trouble. I just send them wood. I want them to help me in the morning at 6:00 unload 25 tons of fertilizer. Uh I'd have 10, 12, 15 of them will be here to unload it and they all at a way while I can't just get up here and tell him well said just get out if he didn't do what I said do be a different team