SIT IN, Part 2

[Music] until the arrest of the 80 students the cians in Nashville had involved only a relatively small segment of the city's 100,000 Negroes but now on February 29th as the trial of the students began the entire negro population would soon find itself involved I'm John I Harris I was sitting as special judge in the city court doing the settin demonstrations here in nashille in the early part of this year there was a hot spot for me as there was much pressure coming from both sides the courtroom was full news paper men photographers lawyers and uh colored people and white people and it was very uh very hard to sit there and listen to all these pressure groups and listen to the lawyers and the defense lawyers and the prosecuting attorney and policemen all the defendants it was a pretty hot spot it was it came a time when a man had to make up his own mind what the law was and if that law had been violated now there have been some false accusations from the colored lawyers that I had prejudged the case or had made up my mind before I went on the bench there is no truth or foundation for none of these acquisation I take it as an intimidation from the lawyers that they might help them in their case did City prosecutor put on their proof the defendants put on their proof they wasn't rushed they had all the time they needed and the final analys that I had to make a decision I made that decision I found the defendants guilty because they had violated the law and they should be punished judge Harris fined each of the students $50 a few days later most of the fines were paid in order to appeal the decision an appeal which is still unresolved but at the time of sentencing as the students were confronted with the choice of paying a $50 fine or spending over a month in jail each of them chose jail their attitude reflected the words of Reverend Martin Luther King who in a speech made in Nashville at the time said we will meet the capacity to inflict suffering with the capacity to endure suffering we will say do what you will to us but we will wear you down following the student trials as unrest continued in the city the mayor appointed a biracial citizens committee one member was lawyer George Barrett what concerned the mayor's committee and the Negroes about the trials and arrests was what it was doing to the community you could begin to feel the impact of of this sort of thing that really it was it was hard to convince uh lots of white people that the Negroes were really serious uh the first attitude was you know it's spring and panty raids and students will be students and these these kids instead of running through the girls doitor are down here sitting in at cresis or ww worth of Harvey at Kan Sloan this was the first reaction I think of of a large number of white people I think some of the Negroes were apprehensive about the method what what really uh crystallized it and unified the Negroes was the was the way the police handled it the mass arrest the subsquent trials the convictions the sort of uh growing feeling among the Negroes that they were really being pushed for something that uh after all they could go in these stores and be waited on in every other count uh then you uh the white people began to feel maybe there was something a little bit more to but then uh one of the one of the leading Merchants told uh told me at May committee we were talking I said now miss so and so do you do do you remember what happened in Mungy when 40,000 Negroes walked across the county for 18 months nearly over segregated bus seating I said don't you think that can happen in this city and and do you realize what it would do and uh he saw a at back and he said well I really don't think the Negroes in Nashville do anything like that to us student sittings uh in Nashville certainly did arouse this community I think not only were the people of the Negro Community bewildered that is the total Community bewildered but this question of what can I do in this situation certainly prayed on the minds of people and of course one of the things that did come out of it was the discovery so to speak of their effective economic purchasing power and that they could use this to uh support the students it's really seldom that an economist has an opportunity to uh put his research to work in programs involving social action but the student City movement really gave me the opportunity to put Theory into practice uh for many years the Negro was a lowincome recipient and he didn't have a great deal to offer the business houses and he was taken for granted it as a customer but since the war and particularly in 1960 there's been a tremendous change in the income status of the Negro and as a result uh he does have money now that's worth competing for the Negroes have not been aware uh to any large extent of their uh economic power particularly at the local level uh at the national level while there has been a lot of awareness about the so-called 17 billion do negro Market which in 1969 is well over $21 billion per year in purchasing power and uh they are aware of it in the aggregate sense but at the local level uh the awareness really did not exist and I it took the Sens to bring this awareness around when we really begin the pronouncements as to what the negr actually spend in this Nashville Community from the Nashville inner city that is the Central City itself uh the buying power of negroes runs close to $60 million per year but I think the important thing here is that uh down town in the Target area that Negroes spend about $10 million a year and it was this particular area that gave us a Target that really enabled us to have an effective economic withdrawal I never forget on the first night that we had a mass meeting that I said from the pull pit and and uh in my own moment of anxiety and perhaps anger uh at the developments that any negro who uh went downtown and traded at the stores where these these kids had been mil mistreated as they had was really nothing else but a Dar fool and there was really no excuse for anyone supporting uh discrimination after the course of events that had taken place in Nashville during those three days and frankly I I think that this kind of stimulation uh actually went a long ways toward uh uh motivating the Negroes to respond to this economic withdrawal they actually got angry in other words they they found this weapon and they were willing to use it and they wanted to whip uh the merchants with uh the best weapon they had at their disposal under those conditions and really that weapon happened to have been uh the economic withdrawal according to local mythology the economic boycott began with a group of four women who were playing bridge we saw the students being hurted into the patrol cars and I was just so moved that I went to the uh telephone immediately and began calling uh 50 people asking them to call 10 more encouraging uh people not to uh trade downtown well you know I uh called at random I would just get the the telephone book each day and just pick out 10 names I that was my duty I was going to do that and sometimes I would get white people so I talk to one white lady I said have you heard the word and she said well yes honey she said I said are you color she says no I'm white she said but my husband said anything that keeps me from downtown it's just good to join it well look I had such a hard time about my sto you know I like very sheer hes M I like them A Certain Shade do you know I was wearing holes that were almost white girl they were terrible I really had a time yeah because when you get I decided um that we have a lot of WS which are manufactured for us by the advertisers so I decided that I was going to wear hose with runs in them oh dear but as far as clothes and that kind of thing you I really have lost interest in dressing well you got a closet full of JK you know don't we all have don't and you know um my baby needed a winter coat and I would have gone downtown and I guess I would have paid oh at least $20 for a coat because to get a nice coat a heavy coat of the last two years it cost at least 20 I maybe $25 and I said well this child has to have a coat I went to the Goodwill I found the best coat it was marvelous I found for $2 I got the best Co I really I he I've been going back there every since because it really what you it B down you have a lot of false CRI your food a place to stay you know it was good though uh from this point of view there were many whites who actually didn't know what we had been going through all these thought about it they hadn't given it a thought thought about it and to me if the cityan did nothing else than to focus the attention and I'm saying frankly from here on out every meting that's fighting for democracy I'm for I'm going to work with it all of us should really be ashamed of ourselves maybe we just spent too much time playing bridge and not is Lord and and the slaves in the day of Uncle Tom Uncle Tom is dead he just hadn't been buried but he he's dead now you think that this sort of thing would be an effective weapon in the future for Negroes obtaining their rights it's always effective as long as they stand together that's something we haven't felt before you know we always feel that we alone in this thing that anytime anything happens it happens to me alone but once we get the feeling it happen to all of us and happen to us at the same time it' be a different thing give me an idea of the spirit of the people uh I was in a group who within a period of a half an hour subscribed to a tremendous amount of money eight people and never would I have thought that that could have happen so that was a good indication of the spirit of the people I thought that economic bar would last until everybody was completely broke and nothing but we think of our students as being the very best that we have to offer in fact it is our future our students are and when our students are treated as uh very worst elements of our society then that makes us all of us become more aware is the moral implications of it the economic implications of it we've always heard that money speaks and we F felt sure that money does speak but we felt we had so little it it made such a small voice it wasn't important in I doing anything about it because we'd be classes being crazy but when the whole Community ratted behind something as they Ratt behind the students then it made a a tremendous impact the Negro uh stayed away from downtown and it stayed away from downtown for the fact that they wouldn't wouldn't support segregation that was a sole issue it wasn't very much trouble for me because uh we had a daughter in jail and we could pretty easily get it over to we were pretty reggy around Easter but we held out all right well it's wonderful thing about Easter though you know we always buy a lot of new clothes for Easter and you just got to have this and just got to have that but seemed like we all took a great pride buying things for E well I never had pocketbook wise that's right wise goad didn't go downt at all buy anything we paid out all the bills every account and during that time F nothing and I personally wouldn't mind it happening again something like that anyway on that the Negro has a terrific purchasing power their standard of living and their earning power has been increased tremendously I would say in the last 10 or 15 years and they have a large amount of money to be spent now and they spend it very very fluently so uh the merchants of course was feeling the pinch because they were definitely not coming downtown to spend that money the Uptown streets were absolutely forsaken of any Negroes made it a point to go around to the different stores up and down Church Street all in all it was reaching some rather staggering and serious proportions the boyot uh pretty well killed business downtown I'd say it was uh roughly 95% effective as far as a negro uh citizen staying away from downtown area completely uh for us uh it was pretty unfortunate the violence that had preceded the boycott kept the white people out of town and then none of the Negroes were coming to town and I sort of felt like the only customers we had left were the green people and there aren't too many of them so our business suffer as I'm sure did everybody else's we just didn't have any traffic for about a month there it was pretty rough what was really disturbing about it I think was that you could see the potential of the city for the first time destroying itself you could see uh long uh years of good relations built up between Negroes and whites uh being destroyed by the struggle going on by the attitude of the Negroes and they felt they were right by the adamant attitude of the merchants in that they would not move because they were afraid of the consequences of uh of uh such a change on on their on their white customers and the fact that they didn't feel that they should lead such a a change in the community what was really frightening about the whole thing was I I think that uh you could really see the city uh destroying itself uh in two armed camps so to speak in and up one negro one white and the end of any real progress over the over the long over a long period of years I talked to some people and they were very fearful that it could get to very serious proportions here because as I told you as I mentioned it it's an emotional issue and the rougher element they are just looking for something to really get into the melee at all times just a certain element that uh prevails in every city that they're looking for just some good opportunity to become involved in it on March the 2nd I was on my job in the arcade beauty salon all of a sudden there was a commotion outside down below we had C shots up there with staples and them shooting the [ __ ] up there trying to get a good fight started up there and this color boy in the arcade window out there you can see out on the street up there then they said let's get the [ __ ] let's get the [ __ ] bring the [ __ ] down [Applause] [Music] why I asked myself why what have I done why is this to me it was a feeling that never could be expressed by anyone unless it was unless it happened to them early on the morning of April 19th the violence in Nashville reached its climax with the dynamiting of a negro home this was the residence of Alexander Luby A city councilman and leading negro attorney he was attorney luy he was our lawyer he came to our defense when we were arrested that day when we really needed something and somebody had tried to kill him we felt we had to confront the mayor with this thing at first we didn't know quite what to do but the idea of the massive walk seemed to emerge from everybody's mind really I don't it was a spontaneous sort of thing and we walked we held our heads High because we were right and we knew we were walking for something right we were really striding toward Freedom it was a wonderful feeling it was magnificent we felt Unity we felt power we felt strength and it's not very often that a human being is exposed to such a raw feeling of goodness I don't think any of us will ever forget it here was a situation in which two forces were meeting headon and there had to be a showdown he had to say something well I felt like that um here were a group of youngsters that were outraged because uh their Leader's home had been dynamited and I felt outraged along with them and to that extent we had a community of feeling between us that made me have a feeling that uh uh really we were after to the same thing and that I was as outraged as they were by this horrible thing and that uh the great majority of the thinking white people were outraged by such a thing we just couldn't let a thing like that happen and so we had this discussion down here in front of the city hall and I was glad to discuss it with them well this was the very first time that I personally had ever felt the mayor's presence as a human being because up until this moment he had always been a name on a sign that I had seen but now I felt a real concern for him I could sympathize with his situation because he was really on a spot um here were 5,000 people who were really angry at him in a sense because we felt that he should have done something that he hadn't done and we were telling him so and I I'm sure he must have felt rather alone at that moment I'd been asked were you afraid of course I wasn't afraid these children were emotionally upset and I recognized that they were and tried to treat them with all due respect and courtesy and let them know that I was willing to meet with them there or any other way but the mere fact that there were thousands of them uh didn't intimidate me in the least and I tried to tell them factually and straightforward as I could that all the laws were going to be enforced and that if they violated the law they were going to be arrested too uh but I did recognize that they were really upset about it and I felt that they were justifiably upset about this horrible thing that had happened and we needed him to say integrate the counters or to tell ntion to do what Nashville knows it should have done a long time ago like about 95 years ago after the Civil War so I asked the mayor first of all Mayor West do you feel that it's wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of his race or color and so they asked me some pretty soul searching questions and one that was addressed to me as a man and I tried the be as best I could to answer it frankly and honestly that I could not agree that it was morally right for someone to sell them merchandise and refuse them service and I had to answer it just exactly that way and we were really very relieved I think we were very pleased and very happy with our mayor at that moment and we all applauded and here was the situation that that that turned out right of course I received considerable criticism for it but had I to answer it again I would answer it in the same way again because it uh was a moral question and was one that a man has to answer and not a politician the confrontation at City Hall marked the turning point in Nashville soon afterward a committee of merchant and student Representatives met and worked out a plan for desegregating the six lunch counters that had been the targets of the cians the economic boycott was withdrawn and Nashville became the first major city in the South to permit whites and Negroes to eat together in public places the Nashville settlement was studied closely by other communities by Midsummer a total of 27 cities had opened their lunch counters to all customers there have been no disorders as a result and none of the merchants affected as reported any loss in business but the Chain Reaction started by the stins is far from complete I think that the economic withdrawal certainly is going to contribute toward developing of some kind of realism on the part of the Southern Community uh in this sense that I think now they are quite aware of the fact and perhaps for the first time in many communities such as Nashville of the tremendous influence that the Negro buying power has on the success and failure of their businesses I think think that the general shock treatment that was given and the general Trend will be in the direction of recognition of this economic uh Power and this in itself will contribute to better uh racial progress in many areas of our community life I think there has been a feeling since Little Rock since uh the Supreme Court decisions that uh as much as we regret it that integration is here and will come to pass and I would like to be able to do as much as I can in a lawful way to prevent its coming or to even impede its coming but I just recognize the stins as just one more step I think it's hard when one has been living all of his life in the South it's hard to feel that these are just people because we haven't many opportunities to associate with negr it's it's hard to break down the barriers of feeling that years and centuries and decades have built up but again I just didn't feel much of anything and and I was just real glad I felt like shaking the hand of these negr who were sitting down at the counters but I think that if I were called in to advise the Negro race on the basis of what's our best interest for the next Century I would say consolidate your game gain in the field of education and become the type of people who would be invited to dinner rather than breaking down the door to eat a piece of pie on the stool next door to a white person the things that happened here in Nashville during the past several months helped to mature these students I heard some of them speak of how they sat at a lunch counter and suddenly grew up because things began to take off meaning for them they their lives began to take on a note of seriousness and and suddenly they began to uh get some grasp of the meaning of life itself they began to get some feel of the fact that a person ought to have a cause for which he can give himself and a cause which will Outlast his own living [Music] in the winter and early spring of 1960 the efforts of Nashville's negro college students had led to the integration of lunch counters at six department and variety stores but they were still excluded from eating at the city's downtown drug stores and restaurants train depot and a bus terminal and on November 2nd only a few weeks ago they began to March downtown again to launch a new round of citians that are still going on [Music] the citytins in Nashville today are by no means unique each day news reports reflect their presence throughout the south from a legal point of view it's still undetermined whether the citytins violate the private property rights of the store owners and a supreme court test is expected one may disagree with the Sittin tactic as a means of achieving the human aspirations of the Negro and some will disagree with the aspirations themselves but perhaps the most important thing is to realize not only that they exist but that negro leaders of the immediate future are demanding that they be satisfied and are impatient with the slow pace of traditional change the Sittin is the dramatic spearhead of a changing mood and behind it is the negro's growing awareness of their economic power the Ultimate Weapon in achieving without violence what they feel is their right what we are witnessing is a new kind of militancy and with it a new kind of soldier the maner he [Music] wild he wild over me and I we never could agree I hisy what his to say be wild over me all the he went wild over me he locked me up and thre away the key in a segregated cage I was [Music] down [Music] [Applause]