Show 21 -
Prelude of a Movement
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WILL THE
CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN?
A Personal
History of the Civil Rights Movement in Five Southern
Communities
EPISODE 21:
PRELUDE OF A MOVEMENT
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Written by:
Worth Long,
Steve Suitts and George King with Vertamae Grosvenor
ACTUALITY:
SPEECH BY SENATOR RICHARD B. RUSSELL5
We believe that the Negro is
entitled to every right that the white man enjoys but
we do not believe that under our social system with
the races nearly equal in number that there is
anything in the Constitution or indeed in the
Christian religion which requires that the two races
enjoy their rights together at the same time and at
the same place.
SERIES THEME
MUSIC: "Will the Circle be Unbroken?"
[The Staple Singers]
NARRATOR
You are listening to Will he
Circle be Unbroken?, a personal history of the
civil rights movement in five southern communities,
and the music from those times.
At the turn of the last
century, America's most prominent black leader,
Booker T. Washington spoke in Atlanta at the Cotton
States Exposition. In many ways, his speech--known to
history as "The Atlanta Compromise," would
foreshadow the city's own approach to racial problems
for decades to come.
BOOKER T.
WASHINGTON1
Those of my race who depend on
severing their condition in a foreign land or who
underestimate the importance of preservating friendly
relations with the Southern white man who is their
next-door neighbor, I would say, "Cast down your
buckets where you are."
MUSIC
"Dixie’s Land"
[United States Military Academy Band]
NARRATOR
In tone and terms, Booker T.
Washington's famous words reflected a pattern of
accommodation that would characterize Atlanta
leaders--black and white, for much of the next
century. The story of civil rights in Atlanta is the
saga of how self-interest and self-image advanced and
limited racial progress.
Student leaders Charles Black
and Lonnie King...
CHARLES BLACK2
Well the prevailing feeling was
that Atlanta was a very progressive city. Negroes and
whites both felt they had pretty good race relations,
you know. This was because Negroes generally knew
their places--and stayed pretty close to them.
LONNIE KING
Well, you see, I think that the
people who were in the leadership at that time were
unelected. They had great power and influence in the
black community. And there was this alliance between
them and the white power structure to sell Atlanta in
its most positive image.
MUSIC
"Lift Every Voice and Sing"
[Morehouse College Concert Choir]
NARRATOR
Segregated by Jim Crow laws,
Atlanta's black population developed a network of
independent businesses, churches, and community
institutions, including a remarkable cluster of five
black colleges around Atlanta University. Former
Atlanta mayor, Maynard Jackson.
MAYNARD JACKSON
Where else have you had since
1865 a pouring into a city of trained black humanity,
influenced by positive principles and values, like
you've had here in Atlanta? They come from all over
the world, all over the USA, and all over the world.
Literally. It's almost like you
can see a great hand reaching down and lifting
Atlanta up, because of these colleges.
That made life a lot more
bearable. It literally was a wheel within a wheel, a
world within a world. Blacks could not go out to many
white things, but whites came onto these campuses.
NARRATOR
While the colleges gave black
Atlanta intellectual freedom, Auburn Avenue, the
community's commercial hub, provided jobs dependent
on black consumers, not white bosses. Together,
commerce, schools, and churches forged a strong
middle class in the black community.
Bill Calloway--a pioneer in the
insurance industry...
W. L. CALLOWAY
Auburn Avenue was considered
the almost nucleus so far as black businesses
throughout America was concerned. It had more
financial institutions than any other city.
NARRATOR
NAACP leader, Jondelle
Johnson...
JONDELLE JOHNSON
Atlanta was a business Mecca.
We had everything here that anybody just about had
white. We had every kind of business, every kind of
store, I'm talking about first class.
W. L. CALLOWAY
And that's why John Wesley
Dobbs, coined the phrase "Sweet Auburn"
Avenue because it said it was more sugar in that one
block than in anywhere else in America. More
concentration of financing.
NARRATOR
Alice Holmes Washington...
ALICE WASHINGTON
It was a good feeling to go to
a black drugstore and sit up and have an ice cream
sundae. Or to go to a black bakery which was operated
by a woman who would have been my third grade teacher
at Oglethorpe and have pie.
MUSIC
"Bicycle Bounce"
[Erskine Hawkins]
NARRATOR
The Auburn Avenue district also
contained another important black community
institution, the Butler Street YMCA.
W. L. CALLOWAY
It had, I would say, the
largest assembly for organizations to meet except in
a church, and more organizations were founded in the
Butler Street YMCA than in anywhere else.
NARRATOR
Jesse Hill...
JESSE HILL
In fact the Butler Street
"Y" was the black city hall of Atlanta.
That's where the first Police precinct was. The
Atlanta Negro Voters League was there and there was
an organization called the All Citizen Registration
Committee with C. A. Bacote.
NARRATOR
Independent of white control,
these organizations provided the crucible for a group
of ministers, businessmen, and
educators--professionals who became the leaders of
Atlanta's black community. Atlanta University
graduate Colonel A.T. Walden was the most prominent
lawyer in town.
Attorney Leroy Johnson...
LEROY JOHNSON
Probably one of the first black
lawyers in the South. He used to tell us a story that
when he would go into the courthouse back in the
early 1900's with his briefcase, white folks would
come and would look to say, "What is that nigger
doing coming to the courthouse with a
briefcase?" They had seen black folks come in
there with overalls and with brooms and mops -- but
not with a briefcase.
NARRATOR
A. T. Walden was perhaps the
city's leading black Democrat. His Republican
counterpart was John Wesley Dobbs.
Here's Auburn Avenue real
estate man John Calhoun...
JOHN CALHOUN3
J. W. Dobbs, used to come in
this office to pay rent. And he would say, "Mr.
Calhoun, there's two things I'm going to do when I
retire from the postal service. I'm going to rebuild
the Masonic Order and I'm going to organize our
people to register and vote." And he came out
and did both of those.
NARRATOR
John Wesley Dobbs' grandson
Maynard Jackson...
MAYNARD JACKSON
John Wesley Dobbs was a
character. I mean genuine, 24 carat gold character.
And as an orator on the stump, I've never seen
anything like it before or since. The Dobbs'
oratorical style was you start low, go slow, strike
fire, move higher, and sit down in a storm. That was
Grandpa Dobbs' philosophy, right.
NARRATOR
Educator Clarence Bacote...
CLARENCE BACOTE3
In the 1930s, he organized the
Atlanta Civic and Political League. And this was one
of the earliest efforts to get ourselves...get us
organized. They would hold meetings to get blacks
registered.
W. L. CALLOWAY
His slogan was "Walk in
Jerusalem." John Wesley Dobbs used that to say,
"Give me 20,000, just 20,000 black voters and
I'll walk in Jerusalem Just Like John."
MUSIC
"I Want to Be Ready"
[The Badgett Sisters]
NARRATOR
But the dreams of Dobbs, Walden
and others remained stifled. By 1940 a few thousand
Atlanta blacks were registered, but their votes made
little impression on white elected officials. Without
the power of the vote, blacks continued to suffer the
indignities of segregation.
Teacher Estelle Clemmons
remembers the all-white police force.
ESTELLE CLEMMONS3
I remember one night -- we
hadn't been living here too long -- somebody tried to
get in one of the windows on the bedroom side over
there. And of course, my mother and father heard this
noise and they turned on the lights and the person
ran. My father called the police. And, after a while,
the police did come and asked my father didn't he
have a gun. He told them "yes." And they
said, "Well, why didn't you just shoot
him?" Why would you waste time calling us? Why
didn't you just shoot him." No other kind of
interest at all. They just got in their car and went
on about their business.
NARRATOR
Hotel worker B. B. Beamon...
B.B. BEAMON3
I was working at an uptown
hotel in 1940. We left there after eleven o'clock. We
had to get a pass from the back door man, verifying
that we worked at Henry Grady Hotel, that we got off
at a certain time. You couldn't get a cab, so a lot
of us walked home. So when the police stopped you had
to show them your pass where you were coming from.
They would pull upside, throw a light in your face, wonder, "Where you going,
nigger?" And if you stuttered a little bit, he'd
put you in the car and liable to whip your head, or
do anything to you.
GLEN RAINEY3
The police force in those times
was really a kind of half-Nazi, half Ku Klux
organization. You see, the policemen came out of the
same population groups that the Klan came out of, and
they represented, quite sincerely, from their point
of view, the same repressive feelings.
NARRATOR
Between 1937 and 1962 the mayor
of Atlanta was William B. Hartsfield. On racial
matters, Hartsfield moved only as fast as he was
pushed--always seeking to control the pace and
direction of change. Reverend William Holmes Borders
recalls approaching Hartsfield about the introduction
of black police officers.
REV. WILLIAM
HOLMES BORDERS3
I remember very distinctly that
I, along with Warren Cochrane, John Wesley Dobbs, A.
T. Walden, C. A. Scott, and M. L. King, Sr., going to
Mayor Hartsfield and asking him for black police. And
he told us, without the slightest blinking of an eye,
that we'd get black police in Atlanta about as soon
as we'd get black deacons in the First Baptist
Church, white.
NARRATOR
Butler Street Y Director Warren
Cochrane.
WARREN COCHRANE3
When we first went to him, he
wouldn't even see us half the time. But, finally we
cornered him, and he said, "When you get me ten
thousand votes, I'll listen to you."
MUSIC
"I Want To Be Ready"
Reprise
NARRATOR
The United States Supreme Court
would soon add weight to Hartsfield's challenge. In
March 1944, the court struck down the all-white
democratic party primary in Texas.
Educator Clarence Bacote...
CLARENCE BACOTE3
That was Texas. Georgia, on the
other hand, said it didn't apply to her. So, this is the
way that Southerners operated; always find a
convenient way to circumvent the law. So we didn't
get any advance. In fact, Colonel Walden and a few of
us tried to vote in the July 4th primary, thinking
that the case of Smith v. Allwright entitled
us to that right. And rumors circulated. Old Gene
Talmadge said, "If blacks attempt to vote, if
the Negroes attempt to vote, blood will flow through
the streets of Atlanta."
Now, on primary day, we had at
that time, I suppose, okay in round figures, close to 4,000 votes, 3,000 or
4,000. And we couldn't back down at the last minute
but it did put things in a very tense situation.
NARRATOR
Mayor Hartsfield also noted the
implications of the Smith v. Allwright
decision.
MAYOR WILLIAM
HARTSFIELD
I read that decision and the
clear logic of it was unassailable. And I said to
myself, this is going to happen in Georgia. And I'm
not going to get caught.
NARRATOR
Police chief Herbert Jenkins
remembers a meeting with the mayor.
CHIEF HERBERT
JENKINS3
I was in his office and he
picked up the paper. He said, "Have you read
this?" And I looked at it, and it was the case
that come out of Texas where the Supreme Court said
that the white Democratic primary is a practice
that's unconstitutional, that you got to let blacks
vote where it will count. I said, "Oh yeah, I
glanced at it." He said, "Well, you'd
better go back and read it...you'd better read it two
or three times and digest all of it, because what the
courts have done is given the black man in Atlanta
the ballot. And for your information, the ballot is a
front ticket for any-damn-wheres he wants to sit, if
he knows how to use it. And the Atlanta Negro knows
how to use it."
NARRATOR
Clarence Bacote recalls the
1944 democratic primary--held on July 4th.
CLARENCE BACOTE3
That was a heck of a day to
have a primary. You could have someone shooting a
firecracker; you'd think they were shooting a gun at
you. But on the fourth of July, we went to this
barber shop over on Bankhead to vote.
Whites lived in this area. They
were all lined up on the porches, looking down,
seeing these Negroes drive up. Life magazine, the
press had their photographers there to take a picture
of these blacks who were attempting to vote.
We went in there and the clerk
went through the motions of looking for our names.
"Your name's not on there, Mr. Walden. Your
name's not on there," talking to me, "Your
name's not on there," talking to Hodges. The
crowd by that time had surged all up against the
windows in front of the barber shop. So, we walked
across the street. Photographers and reporters were
questioning us. We got in my car, and I said
look...about five minutes later, I said, "Let's
drive back to see what has happened." We drove
back, there wasn't a person there. But, I'm just showing
you the excitement created by the efforts on the part
of a few blacks to vote.
MUSIC
"Long Old Road"
[Bessie Smith]
NARRATOR
Meanwhile outside forces were
at work. After fighting for democracy in World War
II, black Americans were determined to fight for
their freedom at home.
On April 1, 1946, the Supreme
Court knocked down the Georgia white primary, paving
the way for a massive black voter registration drive
across the state. In Atlanta, black leaders formed a
new umbrella organization, the All Citizens
Registration Committee.
Urban League leader Grace
Hamilton...
GRACE HAMILTON4
The objective of that committee
was to involve all the community institutions --
churches, colleges, fraternities -- every
identifiable group, and work intensively toward
getting the population registered. In order to do
that, we had really mapped out the part of the city
where Negroes lived.
CLARENCE BACOTE3
Bob Thompson discovered that
there were over l,000 blocks in which we had blacks
living. To make the thing a success, you would need
1,000 some-odd block workers. We weren't quite that
successful. We did have, at the peak of our effort,
around 875 workers in the All Citizens Registration
Committee who would make weekly reports as to the
progress that was being made.
REV. WILLIAM
HOLMES BORDERS3
I personally hauled Negroes to
the courthouse in buses that we had purchased for the
use of a nursery.
WARREN COCHRANE3
Going door to door, sending
taxi cabs, paying for them, taking them, getting
buses and everything - that's what we had to do to
get people registered.
CLARENCE BACOTE3
The YMCA was our headquarters.
Everybody was activated. This was a community effort.
ROBERT THOMPSON
We had lines all around the
courthouse. We put about 20,000 people on there in
about two months. The whole political climate of
Atlanta changed immediately. The whole thing.
MUSIC
"Good Rockin’ Tonight"
[Wynonie Harris]
NARRATOR
One of the first consequences
of this new black political clout was the
desegregation of the police department.
Again, Reverend Borders...
REV. WILLIAM
HOLMES BORDERS3
We went back to Hartsfield and
asked him about these black police, and he asked,
because of our voting strength, "How many do you
want?"
NARRATOR
Police Chief Herbert Jenkins...
CHIEF HERBERT
JENKINS3
Mayor Hartsfield, he saw the
handwriting, he knew what was happening, and he was
in favor of it, but he was moving extremely
cautiously. The power structure, and that's the
business people in Atlanta that had really run
Atlanta for years -- Mayor Hartsfield listened to
them. So did (Mayor) Key back there listen to them.
The real power structure as I construed at that time
was leaning in that direction.
Alderman Ralph Huie introduced
a resolution authorizing the police department to
employ eight black police officers.
NARRATOR
Clarence Bacote...
CLARENCE BACOTE3
Mayor Hartsfield always
resorted to dramatics. We had a big public mass
meeting at Big Bethel Church. This was around 1948.
And I remember on this occasion, Mayor Hartsfield was
to speak. Why just as he started speaking, he
signaled to the door, and in marches these eight
uniformed black policemen. Oh, you can imagine how
electrifying that was.
NARRATOR
Finally, in April 1948--with no
power to arrest whites--Atlanta's first eight black
policemen went to work.
Maynard Jackson...
MAYNARD JACKSON
And I was holding grandpa's
hand, grandpa Dobbs' hand when they came out of the
basement of the Butler Street YMCA. Would not even
let them change uniforms with the white cops. And
when they walked out of that basement, I'm talking it
was like you had died and gone to Heaven. My
grandfather was just struck in awe and amazement and
jubilation and joy. And he said my God, look at those
black boys. He couldn't believe it.
MUSIC
"When The Saints Come Marching In"
NARRATOR
Jondelle Johnson...
JONDELLE JOHNSON
They were heroes to us and the
people in the community treated them like they were
maybe movie stars or celebrities, you know. It was
just a big thing.
MUSIC
"A Celebration"
NARRATOR
Flexing their political
muscles, Atlanta's black leaders formed the
bipartisan Atlanta Negro Voters League.
Warren Cochrane...
WARREN COCHRANE3
Now, we didn't have strength
enough or voting power enough to elect anybody in
those days. And what we had to do was use whatever
strategy we could.
NARRATOR
Again, Rev. Borders...
REV. WILLIAM
HOLMES BORDERS3
I remember during the early
years, the Negro vote was split right down the middle
with Dobbs leading one group and Walden leading the
other. And our candidate lost. So that instead of
splitting, we came together in the Atlanta Voters
League, and let it be known that it was non-partisan.
And we supported the best candidate for the position
without reference to the Democratic or the Republican
Party.
NARRATOR
Maynard Jackson...
MAYNARD JACKSON
Behind closed doors they had
what were legendary battles I hear but when the doors
opened there was absolute unity. Not a crack could be
found. No separation whatsoever. They were locked
together for the good of the community.
NARRATOR
The Voters League would
interview candidates and endorse those who
best-supported black interests.
MAYNARD JACKSON
So these white candidates would
come to Wheat Street Baptist Church at midnight at
the beginning of election day, sit on that front pew
and pray that they got named to the ticket because
when the program was over the ticket went out by a
network they had established to every black voter in
Atlanta. Every one...
WARREN COCHRANE3
I hired a firm to put that card
out door-to-door the night before the meeting. They
put it in every mailbox, every business. Atlanta Life
used to send for theirs. Big companies, which had any
number of blacks, they voted that ticket as a blanket
ticket.
REV. WILLIAM
HOLMES BORDERS3
We never lost a single
candidate, not a one, not a one. We put 'em in. And
the white folks would hang around Negroes then like
bees around a clover field. They had to if they
wanted to get in.
MUSIC
"Shake a Hand"
[Faye Adams]
NARRATOR
Black political power brought
other changes as well. Maintaining the coalition of
moderate black and white leaders required shifts in
attitude for political survival.
George Goodwin...
GEORGE GOODWIN
Well, Mayor Hartsfield was a
man of good heart. He was totally, completely
dedicated to the City of Atlanta. He took the city as
a mistress. He was concerned about anything that was
good for the city. And he interpreted among those
things good for the city the continuation of the
Hartsfield Administration.
GLEN RAINEY3
There's a debate about
Hartsfield. There were people who thought that he
really had a kind of psychological, spiritual rebirth
on the business and became a friend of the black man
and so forth. Maybe he did.
WARREN COCHRANE3
[Mayor] Bill Hartsfield, whom we
supported, was a segregationist and a racist, but
Bill Hartsfield was also a man of integrity. And when
he made a promise to you, he kept it.
GLEN RAINEY3
I think what happened was the
blacks got the vote and Hartsfield, and after him
Ivan Allen, worked out a governing coalition of
largely northside whites and the blacks in the city,
and they governed Atlanta -- still do, in some large
part.
NARRATOR
The city's white leaders
conceded modest changes in return for black leaders'
willingness to accept the South's racial order.
Working "separate as the fingers, yet one as the
hand," Atlanta's black and white leaders
preferred private negotiations to public
confrontations on all questions of race.
MAYNARD JACKSON
So the Atlanta style evolved
and that is, We're gonna sit down to the bargaining
table, cut a deal. I the white power structure leader
may be gritting my teeth all the time, right. I may
be holding my nose theoretically. This is not
medicine I want to take, but if it's good for
business and good for Atlanta, I'll go through that.
NARRATION
Although this approach did not
satisfy everyone nor address the basic evil of
segregation, those in the governing circle, like
Warren Cochrane, saw the Atlanta way of doing things
as a vast improvement over the alternatives.
WARREN COCHRANE3
We had to fight against
racists...We worked with the business community
because they wanted the best leadership we could get,
they did not want rabble-rousers. Our job was to keep
the rabble-rousers out. Well, the Voters League for
twenty years played that role and they kept this city
quiet.
MUSIC
"Atlanta Blues"
[Louis Armstrong]
CREDITS
Key to Archival Collections
| 1 |
U.S.
Library of Congress, Washington, DC |
| 2 |
Howard
University, Ralphe J. Bunche Oral History
Collection, Moorland-Spingarn Research
Center, Washington, DC |
| 3 |
WRFG-FM/"Living
Atlanta" Collection, courtesy of Atlanta
History Center, Atlanta, GA |
| 4 |
"Dawn’s
Early Light," Ralph McGill Papers,
Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta,
GA |
| 5 |
WSB
Television New Video Archives, University of
Georgia, Athens, GA |
|
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