Focus - Rev. Solomon Seay Interview

Rev. Solomon Seay, Sr. served as an active pastoral minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church for sixty-three years. In 1948, Seay came to pastor in Montgomery, where he served on the Negotiating Committee of the Montgomery Improvement Association and, later, as the third President of the MIA and as a member of the Executive Board of SCLC. Seay died in Montgomery in 1988 at the age of 89.

One problem we were facing and one problem we still face here in Montgomery was the conduct of the police force. When I came and took Mount Zion Church on Hope Street as a pastor in 1948, a young woman came to my door about two o'clock in the morning. Gertrude Perkins was her name. She told me that two policeman ad taken her down on the railroad and had all types of sex relations with her. And when I say all type, then you can imagine what I'm saying. She told me what had happened to her, and I sat down and wrote what she said word by word. When she had finished I said, "Now, I'm going to have this notarized and send this away under your name, and if you are not telling the truth they are going to get you for perjury. If you are not telling the truth, they'll put you in jail."

I had it notarized and sent it to Drew Pearson in Washington at that time. And Drew Pearson went to the air with it. By the time the power structure here in Montgomery knew anything, what happened to Gertrude Perkins was all over the nation. From that there was a committee appointed to investigate, and I was made chairman of the committee.

During the time of the investigation, we had a meeting with the Civic League down on Monroe. When we got through with the meeting we walked out and were standing on the corner with one or two men when all at once two policemen came up and shined their lights in my face. And of course I threw up my hands and says, "Why in the world you shining lights in my face?" And they jumped off their motorcycles swearing and cursing and came up to me. I threw up my hands and said, "Whatever you want to do with me just go on." When one of them came close enough to me, I let my hands down. He jumped back and struck me on the arm. I think he thought perhaps I was going to reach for him.

They took me to jail. Some young white men that I had been working with in the Alabama Council on Human Relations heard about it and they came running over. The police let them speak to me. I said to them, "I been waiting for this for twenty years." They said, "Now Dr., don't do anything radical." Of course they didn't know what I was talking about. After they left I could hear the jailer talking to the people downtown. Whoever they were, they were saying, "You all let this man alone. He's not doing anything but trying to protect this woman." But they didn't let me alone. Pretty soon, somebody came and said, "There is a bondsman here to get you out." And I said, "No. I haven't done one thing to be in jail and I'm not going to pay one single penny to get out of jail." They closed the door and not long after that they came back and ordered me out. I came out, and they put me in the black wagon and went on down the street. I didn't know where they were going and what they were going to do. So fear shook me. When I was shaking with fear I said, "Lord, I don't know what's going to happen to me but just let it happen, if it's going to help my people." And the fear fell off of me. I've never been afraid before or since. They took me down to the police station. I had my hat on, and the first thing they did was ordered my hat off. I took it off, and then the captain said to me, "We run this town." And with a lot of curse words, he told me what they weren't going to let me do. After awhile a black man who was one of the leaders around here came in and they had him sign my bond without my asking him. They took me out and took me on home.

They had a grand jury investigation, and in that investigation they had Gertrude Perkins come down. The county solicitor, who had been here for thirty-odd years I reckon, had a roaring, shaking, loud-toned voice, very heavy. I could here him swearing (I was on the outside) and cursing Gertrude Perkins, telling her what she was, what she was telling her lies, and all that. Every time, he'd ask her, wasn't she lying? She'd say, "No, I'm not lying." So finally they brought her out, and because I was sitting right by the door, I had heard everything they said in there. Gertrude looked as calm as a person that had never been disturbed. She was an ignorant, almost illiterate black woman, but they didn't shake her. On the grand jury there were a number of men from different churches. They published their names. All of them on the jury were stewards and deacons in the different churches. You could see what the point was. So the Grand Jury reported that it didn't find anything.

Black people in Montgomery at that time had no organized force to speak up for them. There was fear among blacks in Montgomery, fear still holding the lid down on a better life. We didn't have any help. One thing that happened when they put me in jail was that it shook all the ministers. That's the first time all the ministers in the city were shaken up. When they had my trial, the oldest man I know, Dr. Cleveland, who was the most conservative of Blacks, led the crowd of ministers there to my trial. They couldn't get in, but they walked the streets with people, trying to see what happened to me. They dismissed me. They didn't have any charge against me. Because what they tried then, they still try. They arrest you for one thing and charge you with something else. They knew what they were arresting me for-to break my spirit. And to calm me as a leader among the people. But they charged me with disorderly conduct. That there was their famous means of breaking the spirit of black folks. Disorderly conduct.

I can't talk now like I used to because my vocabulary is somewhat limited now. But you see what I'm talking about-a groundswell of unrest. They grew more restless every year because of these incidents that increased the resentment of ordinary black people about how they were being treated. Treatment on the buses, treatment by the police. And when Martin Luther King came here those issues were still hanging unsettled.

HIS GRANDSON REFLECTS ON REV. SEAY'S LEGACY

My grandfather, Rev. SS Seay, Sr., was brought up in dire poverty in Shorter, Alabama. His middle name, Snowden, was given to him by his mother because there was a hole in the roof and it was snowing when he was born.

Through sheer determination and complete faith in God, he was able to elevate himself far beyond the conditions of his birth. All of his four children graduated from college, and three of the four received advanced degrees. His daughter, Hageleyn (my aunt), had the audacity to enter medical school in 1953– something unheard of for African American females at that time. She has been practicing medicine for over 40 years, and still sees regular patients at age 70. His eldest son, Solomon, Jr. graduated from Howard law school and is an eminent civil rights lawyer in the Montgomery area. He was (and still is, as far as I know) a law partner of Fred Gray, who defended Rosa Parks. Probably his most notable case was the Tuskeegee Syphillis lawsuit, but he also defended Martin Luther King, Jr in a tax evasion case. Three of Hagelyn's children are practicing physicians, and one is a practicing attorney- all a direct result of the powerful example my grandfather set for us all.

Cameron Seay is a doctoral candidate in educational psychology at Georgia State University.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of Southern Changes, the quarterly journal of the Southern Regional Council.