[This transcript has been edited to delete extraneous material for improved flow. Speakers were allowed to edit and expand their comments for clarity and completeness. As indicated by [brackets] some clarifications and explanatory annotations have also been added.]
Angeline Butler Marion Kwan Linda Wetmore Halpern Johnny E. Parham, Jr. Bill Perlman Jane Silver
Kwan:
We're very excited to have this first event and I'd like to welcome you all to this small group discussion. I'm Marion Kwan, I'm the facilitator for this group. The topic, as Bruce said is that this session is, how our movement affected us personally. So how this movement has affected me. Let's quickly introduce ourselves and we have probably just one minute, not more than one minute. By giving your name, your organization, the state you are in, the years you worked in the south. So I will just begin doing that and then I will call on each one of you. So again, like I'm saying, I'm Marion, I was in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in the summers of 1965 and 1966.The Delta Ministry, many of you probably have not heard of this group. This group was sponsored by the National Council of Churches, headquartered in New York City. And it was the only such organization, stationed in the south at that time. And the reason why I ended up there was that I graduated from a Presbyterian College and heard about the Delta Ministries. So, that's how I ended up there. However, the important thing for me was that the Delta Ministry worked closely with all the other groups that were situated in Mississippi. Of course, including COFO CORE, SNCC, SCLC. So, that's my brief background. Okay, next Bill, why don't you share.
Perlman:
I'm Bill Pearlman. I was recruited by Jim Foreman in 1965, to be in charge for the Freedom Singers. Which I've been continuing ever since, I was 18 and we never actually located anywhere. We continued to travel all over this country, in Canada, and in the south playing. Raising money and bringing news back and forth and trying to raise consciousness in the south. And it changed me or made me, I didn't think I was much of anything before I joined. But that's the brief history, it was '65, was April, about a month or a little more after the Selma March.
Kwan:
Were you in the south anywhere?
Perlman:
Yes, we toured in Georgia, Alabama. I was on the Meredith March going down into Mississippi and we performed. We often didn't stay very long we would do a concert, we would do a meeting, we'd play at churches. But yes, I was definitely in the south.
Kwan:
Alright. Okay, thank you. Jane.
Silver:
Hi, I'm Jane Silver. I was recruited, I was in college with Karin Kunstler, I really had to go to Mississippi. So I was there in the summer 65, spent most of the time I was there in jail in Jackson during that time. And the National Council of Churches came to see us. They'd put the white women in the quote on quote, "Troublemakers." in the county jail and everybody else in the fairgrounds. But that summer Stokley had encouraged all the white people to go organize within white communities. So, after getting... I guess we spent about 10 days in jail, and then I went back to New York. Where I lived and volunteered in the New York SNCC office with Ivanhoe [Donaldson] and [James] Foreman, Dinky was there. And then I have to say my experience, not just in Mississippi. Because I wasn't there for very long, but with SNCC really changed my life.When I finished college, I volunteered in the New York SNCC office a lot. Went to New York to try to help organize, moved to Washington and became part of the Barry Administration, working with Ivanhoe and Courtland [Cox]. I just have to tell Bill, that at one point, Cordell was here in Washington at some point. And actually in New York too, when we went to give blood for Ruby Doris Robinson. So I just wanted... I don't know any of you, but I just wanted to say, I'm really glad to meet you. And my whole experience, I think since I went to Mississippi has changed my life and I hope I've helped to change the world a little.
Kwan:
It's nice to hear everyone feeling the same way I'm feeling, feels really nice. Johnny, next.
Parham:
Yes, I was one of the original organizers of the Atlanta Student Movement in March of 1960. And actually was invited to Raleigh over April 21st, where we organized a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Ultimately, brought SNCC to Atlanta. Eventually I became Executive Director of the Medical Committee for Human Rights. Where we then, had staff who were based in Jackson. And during Mississippi summer, we set up offices in Baton Rouge, Selma. We were the Medical Arm of the Civil Rights Movement. And I can readily confess that as a result of my involvement, I have frankly been hopelessly addicted to causes and everything.
Kwan:
I like that. Okay, thank you. So from 1960 on, you were pretty active.
Parham:
Yep.
Kwan:
Yeah.
Parham:
Absolutely.
Kwan:
Great. Linda.
Halpern:
Yes, my name is Linda Halpern. I had a similar experience, I went to an all women's college. And during the spring vacation, everyone was going south to work on their tans and that didn't quite appeal to me. So the YWCA in New York City, was offering scholarships to go to Raleigh, North Carolina and register voters. So that's where I went and that's where I met... well, Stokley was there and oh my goodness...
Parham:
Jim Foreman, Foreman was there.
Halpern:
Thank you, Jim Foreman. Thank you, that's who I was trying to think of. And I signed up they gave us a big application to sign up to go to Mississippi and telling us that if you really want to be in this movement, you need to go to Mississippi. So, Howard Zinn went out to our house, because I lived in Massachusetts. He went to my mom and dad's house and interviewed them to see if, I was mentally and psychologically and physically to do it. They may have misanalyzed that.
Kwan:
What group was that?
Halpern:
So I came and I went to Mississippi. Pardon?
Kwan:
What group were you in that when —
Halpern:
Made me go, I was in the YWCA believe it or not. And they gave me the money to go to Raleigh. And in Raleigh we met all of these other folks from Freedom Summer. So I was a junior in college at the time, I went to Mississippi during the summer, 1964 and then down there Stokley was my field secretary. And he said I was in Greenwood. And he said, "If you really want to be a part of this struggle, you need to understand Africa." And the only way I could see to get to Africa, was to join the Peace Corps. So I went to the Peace Corps in French, West Africa, as a teacher.And that is what I realized, I was not an organizer, I was a teacher. I am a teacher, I taught at Castlemont High School in East Oakland for over 50 years.
Kwan:
Oh, I know that place.
Halpern:
I love Castlemont, Castle's in the house.
Kwan:
Wow.
Halpern:
And I became a teacher and I'm still working with new teachers. Trying to keep them aware of the communities that they serve and how they can grow and keep growing, which is my goal. Technology is my nemesis, it's my Achilles heel. Hit me with technology and I'm down.
Kwan:
Alright, thank you. So there, that's all of us, why don't each of you give now, about a five minute sharing of your thoughts about how this movement has affected you. And it doesn't matter who goes first. But because I can see your faces I'll just start with... why don't we just start with, Bill?
Perlman:
Okay, my getting involved with the movement was like going into the family business. My mother worked at the New York SNCC office for a couple of years, before I got in, Lucia Pearlman. My Uncle Victor was quite active legally, with handling cases out of the movement and various other things. And so there was no rebellion on my part, I was just doing what everybody else in the family was doing. And Jim Foreman was at our house and I had played the guitar and he heard me. And he knew the Freedom Singers were looking for a guitarist. And I met with Matthew Jones initially. And then met the rest of the group at a concert that we gave, literally the day that I joined, out on Fire Island. And I was uneducated as to anything going on, other than what I had been reading and following in the papers. And I had volunteered quite often at the New York office. And I had met a number of SNCC workers who were up from the south while I was there.And so I had some, little bit of background in knowing what was going on and talking to them. But I went into this, more or less, blind and the Freedom Singers, Cordell was next oldest. He was five years older than I was, when I joined. And the group raised me from being just out of high school into getting an understanding of the problems. Getting an understanding of some of the solutions, what worked, what didn't. Meeting I don't know how many. Hundreds of people as, we perform all across the country and just losing myself in the movement. Which has stayed with me ever since. Cordell and I were the closest at that time, it was Chuck and Chico Neblett, and Matthew and Marshall Jones.
So Cordell and I were brothers, through him I met Len Chandler. Who I still am in touch with. And so I literally grew up in the movement. Len hates it when people use the word grownup, because it's in the past tense. But I became an adult, I think while I was there, it was often not easy. There was six of us in a station wagon driving for 10, 12 hours a day to get where we were going. And there were some tough times, conflicts of one kind or another. But ultimately, we all knew we were there for a reason. And once we set foot on stage, all of that dropped away. And the only thing that mattered was getting the message across, telling the story of the movement, telling the history and singing the songs of the movement. And those were inspirational beyond anybody's understanding. I mean, I'm probably the least spiritual person that you know, but when we are singing together, I'm transported somewhere more beautiful in here.
So, two years ago, we were flown over to Denmark. We performed there and in Spain. We have been, except for the last two years down in Selma almost every year. We've gone through Jackson, a number of years for the conferences. And any chance we get we try to get together and perform. There's fewer of us now than there were, but we all dropped 20 years as soon as we set foot on the stage. And I've carried the movement forward into what, I've been doing ever since.
I live in a rural community up in Massachusetts and I'm a County Commissioner and I see it as my goal to radicalize Western, Massachusetts. But I've been trying to include all of the things that I learned back then and over life in the County Government. And making sure, because this is a pretty racist community that I live in. But where I'm basically talking to people, I write a monthly column in our newspaper and often it's the subjects of voting and various other issues. And it's just created a basis for everything else, I've been doing. It's never far from my mind and now I'm frantic, because I'm looking at whatever we might have accomplished, being snatched away. And it's absolutely infuriating. And I feel completely frustrated that there seems to be nothing that we can do at the moment, other than of course encourage people to vote. But I'm not an optimist by nature.
Kwan:
Okay. So I think this might... this topic that you just mentioned, I think we can use this and let's open that up in the second session. I think that, we're all frustrated, but let's talk about that. I was just curious, is there a name for your group and also have you ever tried YouTube? Can we check in on you guys?
Perlman:
Well, I don't have a group per se.
Kwan:
Okay.
Perlman:
Other than the Freedom Singers, I don't know if we're on YouTube, we might be. The last full concert that we gave was in 2015. Which I produced here in my little town and there's really not much to follow, because every once in a while somebody can get us somewhere together and we perform. In the meantime, we just do our own thing, we're talking to each other constantly, so —
Kwan:
Alright.
Perlman:
... I'm looking at these people as my second set of parents.
Kwan:
Yes. Alright, we'll get back to as we give our little introductions. We can also refer to that again, we still have a chance to talk some more. So Linda, can you be next?
Halpern:
You get me started, ask me a question.
Kwan:
Okay, so what we like to share with one another now is, how has the movement changed you? How did you get involved? And then it is not until the second session, where we talk about the movement per se, but this one is more of a personal experience.
Halpern:
Well, Mississippi, 1964 was a real turning point in my life. And it was what June, July, August, Goodman Chaney and Schwerner were killed when I was in Ohio. And I remember Foreman coming out and saying, "It's obvious we can't protect you, go to the phones ask your parents whether you should go or not continue on." Because I was in the second group to go down and we did that. And when I asked my mom and dad and I come from a well, I came from a pretty poor family. If you have ever read Death of a Salesman, that was my father. And my mother was a cook at the local high school. And neither one of them went beyond high school and they made sure my brother joined the military. My older brother put himself through college, working his way through. I got scholarships and went to school in Philadelphia and well Beaver college. It was a suburb of Philadelphia, but I became very active when I was in college.What propelled me, I'm not sure. I think because I am so nonreligious and I would even say maybe non spiritual. But my whole work is in the African American Community. And all my friends are exceedingly spiritual, some of them are ministers, my women friends. I tried to get back into church, it doesn't work for me. But when that summer in Mississippi was truly a turning point, more than Africa was. And it was in a very small village in sorts of where Togo. I had a lot of Muslim kids. I had one student that I know now committed suicide, hung himself on a tree. And the next day in school, I said, "What's going on?" And my students looked at me and I said, "He was that kind." And I said, "what kind?" And he said, "he likes boys."
Of course, he was a boy himself, he was 17. But so there was an anti-gay thing. When I was there, I had a girl living with me too. And her dad who was Muslim came to me and said, "Would you please let Zeta Ha to live with you this year?" And the other teachers at the school will keep asking for her to come. They will say, she's not good at this subject that they're teaching. Would you please not let her go? So I told him that, I would not let her go. And sure enough every night, there were five of us teachers there. I was peace Corps, white woman. They were all Togolize men. And so I didn't let her go.
And that I think, did influence me on the role that teachers have over their students. So Peace Corps didn't affect me, being in Africa did affect me. Meeting in Mississippi and seeing Stokely getting cattle prod, when we got arrested. And he was ahead of me on the truck and they took that electric prod and put it right on his genitals. And I just like, ugh, I mean. And I eventually married an Iranian and moved to Iran for a while, but nothing, no experience I've had can, get to that Freedom Summer. And those cops and those racist the look on those faces, they wanted to kill us. They really wanted us out of their state, as soon as possible. And they killed three of us, but that doesn't equate to, how many bones are at the bottom of the Mississippi River for the 300 years of slavery. And, oh God, I don't know. I think I need help too.
Kwan:
Yeah, let's stop here for a few minutes and go to someone else. We'll get back to the larger discussion about what we all experienced, that we can a talk about that. Okay, Jane.
Silver:
Okay. But before I start, I just wanted to say two quick things. Bill, I have a feeling I met you in the New York SNCC office.
Kwan:
That's great.
Silver:
I vaguely remember now. And I think I knew your mother.
Perlman:
Yeah, where you connected in college?
Silver:
Yes.
Perlman:
Well, remember running a campaign for, Fred Harris?
Silver:
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And, I used to babysit for his little Fred.
Perlman:
Okay.
Silver:
So were you in New Haven?
Perlman:
Yeah, Cordell and I were working together and I believe I met you then, also.
Silver:
You probably... yes you did. And I actually, when I was applying to law school, brought little Freddy with me to my interview. And needless to say, I didn't get accepted, I was babysitting that day.
Perlman:
Right.
Silver:
But I also, yeah —
Perlman:
And also we say, Fred didn't get elected.
Silver:
No. And I have been not recently, but in touch with him, he became a minister anyway. Well, and did you know Ronnie Johnson as well?
Perlman:
Yeah.
Silver:
Anyway. Yes, so I had this feeling we met. The other thing I wanted to say, and I'm sorry to take up so much time is Johnny, I went into public health, but my dad had been in public health.
Parham:
Oh.
Silver:
So Jack Guker and Sid Wolf, they were a good family. Sid, I still see. Jack, I know just passed away. So I just feel and Linda, I don't know if I can make a connection or Marion. But I just started off thinking, I don't know these people, but you know, they're SNCC. But I just have to say, I really feel like it's family now. And Bill, I would love to talk to you some other time about new Haven.
Perlman:
Okay.
Kwan:
That's when and I hope that you can teach each other how to use chat. Or I will give at the end of tonight or tomorrow sometime, I will make sure if you don't mind me giving each of us each other's email address. Is that okay?
Perlman:
Very much.
Silver:
Yes, that would be great.
Kwan:
Yeah, and I can understand if there's objections as well. So please be free with each other about that. Okay, alright. Jane, what's your story?
Silver:
Okay, well SNCC when Bill said it was like they helped him grow up. I really have felt, ever since I was in Mississippi, that this is my family and that it helped me to try to just figure out what my life was going to be like. And how I was going to change the world. So, as I said, when I went back to school, I worked with Karin Kunstler at Connecticut College, we set up a Civil Rights Committee. There was three of us, Civil Rights and Committee, but we raised money. We sent money to Orangeburg, when Cleve was arrested. We marched with Dick Gregory after we had invited him. And actually somebody sent me recently his book, where there's a picture of us there marching.So, it's just became part of me and they helped me to figure out how I could make a difference. So needless to say, I didn't get into Yale Law School. I just told Yale Medical School, I didn't want to go. Even though I'd applied, because now I needed to change the world. And then Peter Orris who was in New Haven, said to me, "Don't go to medical school, go to the school of Public Health. It's really easy and you can keep organizing." So I went to Public Health School in New Haven and worked as Bill said, with the Hill Parents Association with Freddy's campaign and then got in some trouble of my own there with Ronnie Johnson. And then I moved to Washington and got involved with Marion [Barry's] campaign, because Ivanhoe, who I had volunteered for the New York office said to me, "You have to do this."
And I said, "Well, I don't have a job." And he said, "Well, this will be your job." So I volunteered. And then after Marion [Barry] got elected, I applied and went to work for the Health Department for maybe 15 or so years. And actually it was just when Aids was starting. So they assigned me to this mysterious illness. And so I worked in HIV Aids for the whole time, I was with the Health Department. Then was loan to the National Commission on Aids, et cetera, et cetera. But worked in Aids for about 25 years, all the time trying to figure out how I could make a difference. What I could do and still throughout my career, in terms of funding. When I ran a foundation in New York for a while and stayed in touch with a lot of people.
So, gave money to Julian, when he was at UVA or after. Well, while he was at UVA, actually to create the fellowship in his name. And so it's I just, I don't think I've made enough of a difference, but the experiences that I had. And the people that helped me through my life, have I think made me who I am and I'm forever grateful. I'm going to cry actually for the experience because I just... as I said to someone, I'm now 75 and they said, well, what do you want to do? And I said, well, I want to change the world, but now I kind of want to do it, part-time. [Crosstalk] I'm so ... that's me.
Kwan:
You know, I'm sure that you feel the same way, some of you. If there's a march outside my door, I'm just too tired to go. 50 years ago, I would've jumped out. I could have jumped out and just say, I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm going to this march. And I'm letting my children do that instead of me. You know, it's just too much. And so maybe later we can talk some more about that. So that's... Thank you for... So Jane, you were under SNCC?
Silver:
Yes. Yeah. I'm yeah. That, well, it was SNCC and COFO, it seemed like it was SNCC and COFO together, although we [Crosstalk].Cause I remember we stopped in Meridian on our way down by mistake and asked... We were so young and so naive and we asked at a gas station for directions to the COFO office. And of course that was a huge mistake. Yeah. Right. Right. And they said, "Oh, you have the wrong address," whatever, blah, blah, blah. So, but it was SNCC because we were in Gulfport for the training and then in Mount Bayou, which was where we were in Jackson. And it was, it was Stokely and Cleve and Ivanhoe and Selma Hill, and I guess Myles Horton was there also training us from the Highlander Folk School.
Kwan:
Thanks. All right. Johnny, what can you share?
Parham:
Well, hearing all of these experiences, it's really rekindling so many remarkable memories with names that have always been on the radar. I actually grew up in the segregated South, and when the four students at North Carolina A&T sat in the Woolworth's on February 1st of 1960, that really ignited a fire. At the time, I was on an internship in New York City on February 1st, and I recall on the front page of the New York Times on February 2nd was this report of four black students sitting in a lunch counter in Woolworth's, in Greensboro. I said, my goodness, these guys have to be some brave dudes.I then returned to Atlanta on February 15th, completing my internship. By that time, Julian Bond and Lonnie king had begun discussing the need to replicate sit-ins in Atlanta. So we went about the task of organizing all of the students within the Atlanta University Center for an attack on segregated facilities. But what we targeted were facilities that were located in public buildings, like the city hall, state capital. I led a group into a federal building, a cafeteria in a federal building. There were two federal buildings identified. And the fascinating thing about that, which has since been extraordinarily instructive to me actually, is that the people, the adult community in the black community, many of those people had been engaged in organizing the Atlanta Negro Voters League. My mother was one of the original organizers of the Atlanta Negro Women's Voters League.
Basically, they immediately recognized that what we, the students, were onto was something very important. So, instead of then stepping up and giving us advice, they quietly provided funding for us to continue this movement. For instance, when we set out on March 15th of 1960 to really demonstrate in nine separate facilities, there had already been organized, not only legal counsel provided by Donald Hollowell, fabulous lawyer, historic figure, there was legal counsel already arranged. There was also bail money already organized through the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. When Ella Baker and Dr. King called for a meeting in Raleigh on April 15th of 1960, calling together people who had been organizing and arrested, this adult community in Atlanta paid our way to Raleigh.
This was really... It was, frankly, a kind of pattern that I have since attempted to replicate in my experience. Like all of you, I am old, but I think it was you Marion, who pointed out that you still would love to join marches, but sometimes it becomes a challenge. Well, I remember vividly I live in New York City and I remember that when the DA in Ferguson, Missouri refused to bring charges against the cop who killed Michael Brown, I heard outside my window a march going down Columbus Avenue. Well, right away I put on my shoes and joined that march. And we went all the way, stopping traffic. I mean, it was this old man out there stopping traffic. But this was something that was actually... I was infected as a result of the movement, and that's something that I could not resist. I remember the Wall Street demonstrations. Basically I was there with those movements.
But with regard to then the continuation of my organized involvement, Jane has mentioned Jack Geiger where, well, believe me, he was one of the cornerstones of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, along with Count Gibson and so many others, Aaron Wells at the time was the president of the board for the Medical Committee. And then John Holloman succeeded him. These were really people who were so committed in their respective professions. I recall so vividly when I was director of the Medical Committee of Human Rights, John Holloman organized the protest against the American Medical Association was the first such demonstration of an American Medical Association convention that was held in Atlantic City with physicians protesting the racism of the AMA. And actually, while with the medical committee there was a meeting convened with Bill Kunstler's, partner...
Parham:
Kinoy. Arthur Kinoy. And we met with Arthur Kinoy because we then were planning to sue the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for violating Hill-Burton funds, allowing public federal monies to be fed into segregated hospitals. Arthur Kinoy was leading that initiative. I mean, these were dynamic times, but we've kind of touched upon where we are today, and of course that's something that will be addressed later, but it has become over the years something that is very apparent to me.I don't know how it affects you, but I frankly, I do not see that which we did as futile or as lost efforts. However, there was something about us, when I reflect on it, that may have been undergirded by a level of naivete with regard to the American system. And when we look at what is happening today with regard to the actions of American police departments throughout, it's no longer a Southern thing, or at least it's no longer recognized, even though it existed back in the sixties in the North. Now it is a national epidemic.
Racism is so baked into the American system, in my view, that I think that what we, certainly what I, attempt to do is I no longer now set out to change the world. Because I pretty much lost that battle. But I am attempting to kind of narrow my focus and attempt to make certain significant changes, in which perhaps I can measure the outcome. You see, back in the sixties when we said "we want our freedom and we want it now," that pretty much was something that, in many respects, even though what we did brought to the fore just how racist America is. But in reality, in my view, it was the geopolitical situation that led America to really getting rid of racial segregation, American apartheid, and created {UNCLEAR} today. We're still dealing with those issues.
And now we no longer even have... In American history, frankly, when we look at the makeup of the United States Supreme Court, it was the Warren Court that basically was there to bring about significant changes in not only criminal law, but in racial justice. So the makeup of today's Supreme Court today, it really is what the Supreme Court has always been. So these are the challenges that we face, and I could go on forever bemoaning where we are, but it is absolutely splendid that so many of us can say that we were there, and we were committed to the extent that we were willing to put our lives on the line. Some of us really did make the supreme sacrifice. But willing to put our lives on the line, because we knew that what we were organizing against was the right thing to do.
Kwan:
And we still think it's the right thing to do. That's how I feel.
Parham:
Oh, yes.
Kwan:
Someone once said that when you see the truth, it's irresistible, you can't turn away from it.
Parham:
Right.
Kwan:
And why we are so together. I feel like we're in one spirit right here. I would like to share, and I hope you don't mind, I had it written, so it might appear maybe too formal, and I apologize. But if I don't put it down, I might stay for another two hours and you're going to be tired of hearing me.
Kwan:
I graduated from college back in 1965 and heard about the Freedom Summer the year before. I didn't want to return back to my hometown right away after graduation. That was in San Francisco and in Chinatown. I was curious, I wasn't there to save the world, but I was curious. I heard about the Freedom Summer, and despite the danger I headed south. And the key role that I played with the Delta Ministry was in grassroots organizing, which is what the Delta Ministry does. We stayed in one spot and we just worked the community. And I got involved in the community there very deeply. Lived with the black community in one of the homes there for two summers.What changed me? The change was, that I was the only Asian Freedom Fighter there, and the white powers in charge didn't know what to do with me. And that often gave me an edge and an advantage, oftentimes. Not looking black or white, it also gave everyone else a lot of confusion. Where are they going to put me?
One of the best ways for me to explain this is, the first day on my job, I was with about eight other freedom workers. We went to the Hattiesburg Courthouse. One of our own freedom worker was arrested on the highway the night before on vagrancy charges because he was walking alone along the highway. We needed to get him out because we knew that he would not be safe there. As we filed into the courtroom, we all sat together on a bench. We were black, white, and me. Because we were not seated in the right place, the deputy sheriff had to approach each of us colored folk to tell us, "Please move to the colored section." We were all seated in a white section. When a deputy got to me, he suddenly froze.
He just stood there in front of me. I was sitting, he was standing in front of me and he was just... didn't know what to do. And then he looked to the back of the courtroom where the judge was standing, waiting for us to get into position, which we were not able to do. He looked at the back of the courtroom, looked at me again, and then he sort of went like this under his hat [motioning his hand lifting off his officer's hat to scratch his head].
And he just was mesmerized. And so finally he went to the back of the courtroom and talked to the judge and they whispered for about a minute. And then the deputy sheriff approached the front of the courtroom and he announced that this case is dismissed. The court didn't know where to put me, to be colored or not to be colored. That was a question. If I had known this were to happen, I would've appeared at every trial in the county to dismiss trials. But of course, I'm talking ideally.
I speak to students at schools about the absurdity of race as a focus of systemic racism and how the white establishment want to control. It's like what Johnny was saying about wanting to... How do we get rid of this white supremacy theory? How do we get rid of it? And it's stayed with us, it's part of our racism in this country. So I realized from that first day in court how discrimination was expressed in every corner of the country. Discrimination in the courts, in our local schools, in the courts in housing, education, jobs, in Chinatown, and in the legal district of Hattiesburg, injustices were in both communities. They were administered differently, but I was witness to both. I was not a tourist in either Chinatown or in Hattiesburg. I lived in both communities and I witnessed that racism and I witnessed that poverty.
It was easy for me to have slipped from one community to another because they were both minority groups. And somehow I felt like I had two Chinatowns because of the minority status and how both communities have been affected by racism. So one Chinatown was... You know, it's a funny thing. Sometimes I talk about Chinatown being... In Chinese dialect, we have short dialects. And then when I got to Hattiesburg, it was Southern slurs, really long, long dialects. And I just had to... my ears, it just doesn't function very well. So that was an interesting difference that I saw. But what impressed me was that it was the humanity, it wasn't the race. It was the cruelty that had put two communities the way they'd been situated, just the same condition. And so I saw the inhumane condition and the injustice more than I saw the skin color. And that was what... [pointing to Parham] You all talked about being infected, being inspired. And that's how I got inspired, by being in touch with those two communities.
Kwan:
And now we're open for [general] discussion. And I think we have, 45 minutes. So can we open up and I would love to have us have just a casual conversation with each other. So let's go back to the first theme, what we're talking about. Can we talk some more about what you started saying, each of you, can you elaborate? Would you like to think about maybe some things that really stand out that you would love to discuss? Whatever comes to your mind?
Parham:
Well, I'm just wondering this. Basically I must confess that I'm extraordinarily excited about the Black Lives Matter Movement. I think that they've really captured the social justice imagination. When they first began, I do recall at the time that I believe it was the approach of the 2016 election. And at the time, we were engaged in some programs around the Atlanta University Center to try to work with the students then, and perhaps try to reach out and share not just some of the things that we have done, but to encourage their activism.We sought to reach out to the organizers of Black Lives Matter, and I wanted to bring one of the key organizers to Atlanta to address the students. And one of the people who had been engaged in the Atlanta student movement, who was working with us and organized this activity, did not want to bring this person from Black Lives Matter because she was annoyed that they had determined that they were not going to encourage people to vote in the 2016 election.
And my position was that, frankly, I think that that was a very smart move because sometimes, when we look at just voting and how our vote is largely taken for granted, that perhaps the initiative should be more geared to political education. How do black people use our votes? And how do we negotiate with politicians who are jockeying for our votes, as opposed to simply saying, we love you, and we will support you because you are running on a Democratic ticket. And I think that frankly, this happens to be where we may find ourselves today. Now, I must confess that I'm extraordinarily excited about the position of the progressives in the Congress.
Kwan:
I'd like to... Let's keep that in focus. I'm sorry if I'm interrupting you, I just want to make sure that we are in step with our personal... How does that relate to our personal experiences? Because we can talk about that now, or we can talk about that at second session.
Parham:
One problem I have with regard to the second session, I will have some time constraints there, and so that's why I basically mentioned that.
Kwan:
Well, I hope... Will you be able to join us in our second session?
Parham:
I'm afraid not.
Kwan:
Oh, there'll be two people. Oh, okay. Briefly. I'm just asking the rest of you who will be able to stay in the second session, do you have something that you would like to share first, any more about your personal changes that you have, or what it meant for you in the movement? But let's make sure that we keep Johnny's point. I think, personally, I don't mind getting into that, but I want to make sure that we covered the other points first. For Bill and for Linda, anything? How about making time in this first session for Johnny to talk before we end?
Perlman:
Yeah. Traveling with the Freedom Singers, these were five guys who had all seen very tough times in the movement through jail and beatings, et cetera. And there was an attitude among them, which I have learned is that ultimately SNCC people don't take crap from anybody. If we are set out to do something, we're going to go ahead and do it, regardless of what anybody else has to say.Now, this position has gotten me into no end of trouble on a variety of occasions, but having gotten into a losing battle with a state police officer in Mississippi and being jailed, nobody else has ever really intimidated me. There is nobody else that I've ever met or dealt with who carried that kind of threat. And having lived through that made me... It's given me a sense of courage, or at least not really caring what's about to happen because whatever it is, is already happening, I've been through that. Nobody else is going to intimidate me or threaten me.
And that was one of the things that I got from being around. My very first trip south, I was with Chuck Neblett and two black women and we stopped at a place to get gas. Chuck sent me inside to order food. And when the food came, said it was in a bag, and I said, "No, we'd like to eat it here." And the guy said, "No, we're not letting you come in here and sit." And I said, "I don't understand."
Then Chuck came in with money for the gas and he said, "What's happening?" I said, well, they won't let us sit in here. And then Chuck said, "Well, we don't want the food then." And I said, "You know, all we want to do is eat it." Well, I went back out to the car, Chuck paid and said something, and the restaurant owner finally said to him, "Listen, get the hell out of here, take that little white son of a bitch with you."
And we all got in the car and took off. We were followed by a couple of pickup trucks for a while, but that was my introduction to heading to Atlanta. That was in South Carolina. We drove very fast to the state line. I understood after a while, when I first joined the word of the day, the goal, was integration. And that concept disappeared and the goal became the vote. We were not winning hearts and minds. We were looking for a vehicle for power.
Halpern:
I think one of the incidences in the South that made me realize how many systems are oppressive and have deep, deep consequences... I mean, this country seems to me to have been built on two very deep pillars, one is racism, and the other is the genocide of the Native American. And it's like, I don't know how we can survive that. But one of the incidences in the South that made me aware of the depth of the system is when we got arrested, and we were jailed, and we were, all the white women, there were seven of us, in one cell. And all the African American women, 30 of them were in another cell.The guys were downstairs and we sang freedom songs the entire time that we were in there. And I think the bail was $200 [equal to $1800 in 2021], something like that. And my mother and father struggled like crazy. Went to my grandmother, who wasn't a happy camper with me being there anyway, but I think she gave him the money. We got the money, but we decided we wouldn't get out until everybody was out. So Harry Belafonte and Sydney Portier sent money down for everybody to get out. That took a little while, but those freedom songs kept us going. I mean I thought they were just going to let us out so we would shut up. People were outside singing with us. The power of the music is what really affected me.
And even as a teacher, I always, like when they were writing, I would be playing the freedom songs in the background. I just wanted, I mean somehow — I live in Berkeley and it's supposedly a "woke" area, but it is a white area. There's very, very few people of color now. And with the way the sales of the house and everything, people are paying three times what the asking price is. But there are all these white techies coming in from San Francisco and stuff. They're all moving here. I don't know how to get rid of the systemic racism. It is so deep and so complex.
It's really hard to wrap my mind around it. We're in a book club and Jane Moore, who was Jane Bond growing up [sister of SNCC leader Julian Bond], but she's one of the main people, and the book club's all African American. But except for my husband and me and we, even this is disintegrating. One of our people just passed from a cancer. Another one, Jane is moving to Fresno. I can't believe she's moving to Fresno. Because her son just had a baby. I just don't know how to make changes anymore. I used to be able to do it. And I like to think I am doing it even when I work with the new teachers coming in.
But I mean, and they have these little rubrics and they score for here and here, but I just don't see this country moving in a direction of equality and equity. And we keep espousing these words and it's, and we keeping the eye on the prize. But what is the prize? Are we going to become a truly integrated society? I mean, these are the questions that just hang with me.
I mean the bright spot for me was that when I left Greenwood, we had been, Silas McGee had been shot and we took him to the hospital. Of course, we come to the wrong side of the hospital. So the sheriff [Honeystyle?] was standing there with his arms crossed. You can't come in this side. So we had to get in the car and go across to the other side.
[Referring to local segregation rules regarding use of entrances. Since McGee who had been shot was Black and Halpern was white, whichever door they tried to use violated a rule.]In the meantime, I think it was Bob [Zellner] had wrapped Silas's head in his t-shirt, which is already all bloody and put his head in my lap. So when I got out there, they wouldn't let us in the one side. We went to the other side, went up to the door. They [the police] had gone through the door, was standing there blocking us. So I went up, we got the stretcher. There was one black doctor down there. Brought the stretcher. He was standing in the back, waiting for us to get Silas across the threshold. We brought him in on the stretcher and Honeystyle's blocking.
And I said, well, can I get in? I'm white. Can I get in inside? And he goes, "No." So we went over, and the black doctor finally broke the way through and came and got the stretcher. And it was like, it doesn't matter whether it's medical, whether it's law, is we are just so layered with racism and sexism, all the "isms."
We just can't escape our own histories, no matter how hard we try. I mean, I love seeing Black Lives Matter signs all over Berkeley. I love it. People have them in their yard, but they're all white. We're all white.
Kwan:
Okay. I'm just going to chime in as one of us. You know, I feel the same way that so many of you are speaking, and I'm fighting it. I'm fighting the frustration. And the way I fight it is I've been showing people Black Lives Matter has a sign. And I did a lot of research and there are many ways of expressing it in different languages. And I finally decided I'm going to write it in Chinese. And the reason why I'm saying this is it connects with what you're all saying.And then some. What I'm trying to say is, and I'm like Johnny. I'm thinking about the second session. Where do you think the movement's going? I just want to say briefly about that is it's already changing. That there are changes. But it's very damn slow. We take two steps forward and one step back. And then sometimes one and a half steps back. With the Trump administration, I thought we went back five steps, but what the hell?
I see my children, grown children in the marches now. You know, I used to be in the anti-Vietnam war afterwards, and I joined those marches and they were all white males. Now I go out, I went to the million women's March the day after inauguration of Trump. I was in Oakland and there were so many varieties and diversity of people. And there was a young Chinese or Asian father. And what's he doing with his infants, kid, and his wife. And this is "What are you doing here? This is a women's March." And he says, "I'm here for everybody." So to me, I'm showing my Black Lives Matter poster, and I'm advertising it for everyone to use because this is the new battle.
And I don't want to be pessimistic. I really want to go forward. I do speaking engagements in with the Bay Area vets group. And when we talk to kids, we tell them that there's "no living happily ever after." There's no fairy tale. Racism has no fairy tales. That there's no light at the end of the tunnel. And that's what I tell them, because that's what I decided. That that's what I'm learning. The lessons of racism. I'm infected like the rest of you. I just can't just stop, and say let it be what it is. Even if I'm losing, I'm not losing the lesson.
That's important to me, I guess I'm just, I can feel our frustrations. And I try not to go to bed thinking about it because I wake up depressed, and that's very hard. I'm glad I have my husband, because if I were living alone, I don't know what I would do. But it's just feeling your reality and my reality. Yeah. It's hard.
Halpern:
I can identify with that. Because my first husband is Iranian. My second husband is African American and that's who I had my son with. Now he lives in Montana, but he has a great time. He's into ice hockey, which is what he did here in Berkeley when he was growing up here in Oakland. And my other daughter, a stepdaughter, is Italian. But she had a baby. She's gay, but she's Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican. I mean, she's kind of an incredible mut and beautiful, and her child is equally so. So we're raising them.And her daughter, Naya is now is in Oakland Unified, but she was at the {UNCLEAR} school. And they just learned freedom songs, and they learned marching and they would come home. And half the time, she didn't even know what she was saying, but they made picket signs and they were marching in the marches. And they're growing. They're growing in a most beautiful way. So it's still a children's march to me. I do have hope in the future, in the kids.
I live across from a Catholic school and even they are... I hear the kids out front, playing out in the playground. It's still schools to me. It's still education. I'm an educator. And that's I think where the hope for the future is, is in the children.
Because the courts aren't going to do it for us. Right.
Silver:
Jane, you want to unmute? Yeah, you seem like —No, I am listening. I have to just switch gears for one minute. I don't mean to break the mood, but it seems like I was in jail with you, Linda, in Mississippi, because we were... Harry Belafonte, although I guess he bailed a lot of people out. We were there in Jackson and we said we weren't going to get bailed out until everybody got bailed out. Were you in Mississippi? In Jackson?
Halpern:
No, I was in Greenwood.
Silver:
Oh, well I guess I guess they bailed a lot of people out because we said the same thing. We weren't getting out until everybody got out. And actually, I think Casey Hayden was there and Monica Geat. I just have to tell this one story. I know it takes us off message, but I know that the second session is going to be a lot about this discussion. Was that when we were in jail, the press was coming to show how well everybody was being treated. And of course there were thousands of people in the fairgrounds with nothing. With no mattresses, with no toilet paper. So whomever it was, Casey or whomever said, "Take off all your clothes." So me, the kid who didn't even know nothing said, "Why are we taking off all our clothes?"She said that way, the press can't take pictures. And it was the National Council of Churches who came in and said you can't, go away, goodbye, whatever. So I'm sorry to be so nostalgic, but when I hear these stories and think about those days, it makes me feel stronger. The only thing I wanted to add was from what Johnny said and what Linda said. The whole issue, I guess the whole meetings for tomorrow on, are being about, it's not about passing the torch, but it's about sharing the information, about what we've learned, what we are learning. And I guess my question to Johnny is, when you talk about the issue of voting versus political education, do you think it's possible to do both?
I mean just — `
Parham:
Yeah, basically that has largely been the goal, but thus far it's not been proven to have —
Silver:
I know.
Parham:
Been very effective.
Silver:
Yeah.
Parham:
Essentially the black vote is essentially one that's largely just taken for granted.
Silver:
Right.
Parham:
We're seeing that now. You know, I live in New York City and I could tell you that before any candidate gets that 6% of the Jewish vote, there is a built in commitment to Israel. Okay.
Halpern:
Yeah.
Silver:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Parham:
And that's understood. Now I would love to replicate that kind of muscle because basically, we largely form the base of the Democratic Party. And I mean, a simple example right now with this bill that's right now being debated by the Congress. Initially there was something like 45 billion dollars ear marked for historically black colleges and universities. That has now been reduced in the compromise bill to 2 billion dollars. Now, for a group that formed the base of a party, how could that be? Mean? And this is just what's current. I've been doing this stuff long before 1960, and I've seen administration after administration, a local election after local election. And yet I see one of the most dedicated segments of a voting population that religiously to turns out, and there {UNCLEAR} but also Linda, I just want to also simply add on a lighter note that when you speak with Jane, please do give her my regards.
Halpern:
I will
Kwan:
Johnny go on. Talk some more about what you want to talk about.
Parham:
Well, I really do think that there's a great deal of wisdom that comes out of this group. I mean, don't forget there aren't many people alive who've done some of the things that we've done. Who have really manifested a level of commitment that was so common among this group of people who are convening now. That's remarkable. A very interesting example. When I moved to New York immediately, I affiliated with New York CORE. So every Saturday we would organize demonstrations down on Route 40, because below the New Jersey turnpike, all of the restaurants were segregated. The only place that black people could eat was on the New Jersey turnpike. So eventually I was arrested down there.So there were a group of white women who, we were always an integrated group. So group of white women decided, they were just having lunch one day, and says why don't we go down and have a demonstration of our own. Let's go down below the turnpike, and just because this is what we believe in. Well, they got in a car. They went down to Route 40. They went into a restaurant. They were served, and they wondered, well, nobody's protesting. Well, they had so identified with the movement, they had so internalized this movement, that they identified with the people of who were with the issue of protesting against segregated facilities.
So they were not arrested. They had to come back to New York. The branch of black people. So they could go back down there to get arrested. I mean, that's, that's a level of absolute identification and commitment. Now, I'm seeing some of that, frankly among the social justice movements that were taking place, that were really manifest last year.
I mean, that was absolutely a powerful kind of showing. Now where does it go? That's what we have to do because I do vividly recall that during this six {UNCLEAR} once a generation of segregation has move on, that the world will be a bit better.
Halpern:
Yeah.
Parham:
Well that was truly a naive approach. We just had not really looked at the system. I would hope that this fervor that we see today is not so naive. That I think is extraordinarily important. And that's where, perhaps, if there's anything that we can really share... I don't think our tactics that were employed back then will necessarily be that relevant with the exception of housing, with the exception of selective buying campaigns. All of those are critical, but
Kwan:
Yeah, I'd like to add redlining. You know, gerrymandering.
Parham:
Oh, absolutely.
Kwan:
Its systemic racism. If we can tackle that and we can do a lot of political education for the youth about what the hell is that, that's restricting us from... No matter what your vote is, you may not be voting. It doesn't matter unless you change some of those damn boundaries.
Parham:
Absolutely.
Kwan:
But that's... Yeah.
Parham:
Excellent. Basically I do think that we've had some... There is a rocky road ahead, folks. Trust me.
Kwan:
Yeah.
Parham:
And I see it with my grandchildren. I many times wonder what really kind of world will they grow into? Simply because we knew that there was a very vicious system out there. We knew what white privilege was as opposed to black suffering. But today when I speak with a lot of young people, they frankly don't necessarily see it until they get out into the world. We were in an interesting time. And I left Atlanta first {UNCLEAR} moved out to Los Angeles. Again, active with LA Corps. Every Saturday we would go out, and we would identify... We would do housing testing and where there was manifest segregation. We would set up a picket line in front of the facility.Well, I was once invited to speak to a group of whites. And the question was raised, well, if you were advising the south today, what would you suggest they do with regard to racial segregation? And my answer was I would advise them to do as the north and the west have done. Simply disband legal segregation and you'd have the same old segregation in America. But that's the thing that has highlighted, at the time had served to highlight the south and set it off as something different. But today, heck if you go in upstate New York, you going up south. Were it not for metropolitan New York, which includes New York City, Westchester county, New York state would be red. Red. You would be astounded a Trump territory throughout this state. It's remarkable.
And this is not unique. It's the metropolitan areas. That's why right now this voter of suppression law in Georgia, is targeting Fulton County. And that's no different from what's happening in so many other states. We were basically registering and fighting for the right to vote. And now we are right back there 60 years later.
Kwan:
Yeah.
Parham:
Isn't that remarkable? And it's absolutely astounding. And yet you can't even get the United States Congress to even, because it's so baked into the system, that you can't even get a voting rights piece of legislation through the United States Congress. So we're really dealing with a national epidemic.
Kwan:
Yes.
Halpern:
Or abortion rights.
Parham:
Oh, they're just {UNCLEAR}. We're right back to 1959 and 1960.
Halpern:
Right.
Parham:
We can go back to direct action. I have, honestly, I don't know how to change, in the words of Jack Kennedy, the great chip {UNCLEAR} union. I don't. I've pretty much given my all, as all of us have. And I just honestly don't know how to change this. I really don't.
Kwan:
And let's hope that the young people... Even though we were saying, this is it for us, we do need to pass the torch. I can't give up. I just can't do it. I think for me, I have to look to young people and leave it to them. I just have to have faith to give it to them. And I hope that the education that all of us have given to young people will serve its purpose.I mean, I had no idea back in 65, 66, that in my senior life here, now I will be still talking about it. And you know, what am I doing? I'm supposed to be relaxing, having grandkids. I says, no, I don't have time for any of that because I don't think we're going to stop fighting. And, you know...
Halpern:
I agree.
Kwan:
Yeah.
Parham:
I mentioned that I've sought to kind of narrow my focus. And so I've determined that frankly, what I'm doing and what I've done, I've kind of focused on trying to really undergird the future leadership for historically black colleges and universities. And one of the ways that I have done that is I put together a concept to really train and ultimately certify people who aspire to be presidents of HBCUs. And so I was successful in getting a planning grant for that. And it's housed at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta. We currently have the first cohort. We will be completed this certification program in December. And so we still try to, as I've indicated, I've concluded that I've pretty much run out of road as far as changing the world, but at least I am focused on something, that I feel...
Kwan:
You know, Johnny, that gives me a lot of hope. After all you said, and all of a sudden you come out with this one statement and it's given me so much hope. I say hope, because all this time you were very pessimistic about where we're all heading; then you come up with this thing, this great project you're doing. What's with you?! [laughter] That you said you hadn't done anything, but you did that. And I wish I had done that.Maybe, I would love to get... I mean, stuff like that, that you guys are doing. I would love for you to, to us to continue some kind of a short term email, because I would love to see what you guys are doing. And it gives me a chance to talk to young people about what some of us are doing. I think we're stubborn. I think we're going to go forward, no matter what.
Halpern:
I agree. And I remember when in the movement, we went up to Memphis to get, when, when in Mississippi. Six of us, I think, went up to Memphis to get a fleet of trucks, cars that they were...
Kwan:
Okay, I'm going to hold you. We're supposed to be disbanding, but listen.
Halpern:
Okay.
Kwan:
No, I don't want you to stop. But there's somebody who's Angeline, who's supposed to be joining us.
Halpern:
Okay.
Kwan:
So I'm sorry. I'm going to admit her now. Okay. And then we're going to break pretty soon. Okay.
Silver:
And I have to say goodbye for the next group, and I'm really sorry, but maybe I'll see you in the next couple of days during the other sessions.
Kwan:
Okay. Jane and also Johnny, if you both have to leave, I would suggest... Here's a suggestion that you can also, in the future, after the small group meeting, you can also add what you would like for your second session, because you're not around. You're welcome to respond. I'm not sure to who. To Bruce. We will all be getting an invitation after this conference is over for small group participants to add anything to the recording. That means you can add whatever you want from the second session and also the first session. You can revise, you can add, you can delete.So I encourage you to add your input.
Silver:
Thank you all.
Halpern:
Okay. Well, I just wanted to tell another incident in Oakland, because I worked for Oakland Unified, and I still work for them, but training new teachers coming in. But as a —The state wanted to take over Oakland. I was the teacher, there was one person from the community, two people from the community, and we chained ourselves to the superintendent's desk and didn't want the state to take over. So we got arrested, spent the night in jail, got out about 4:00. The state didn't take over, so we won that one. There're things we win, there're things we go halfway on, like in Berkeley now we're trying to get police accountability and we win some, we lose some, we negotiate. It's never a black and white thing. You know, you want to say black and white together, but it's never that. There's always shades of gray. And I guess we have to live with that and we have to keep fighting. We just have to keep the movement going.
Kwan:
Yeah. You know, I remember there's a principle about "the more diverse we become, the harder it is for us to move, because we have to take more time understanding each other..."
Halpern:
and listening. Yeah.
Kwan:
And listening. And that's why it may seem like for me forever, but I have to remember, I have to look at all the little pieces and that we're all learning from one another. I think we're, we're talking about progressing and, and how fast and how slow and how stalemate we become. And I think that we're trying to figure out where we are in our different lives.
Parham:
I see Angeline Butler [has joined the discussion].
Kwan:
Yes. Hi.
Butler:
Hello.
Kwan:
Welcome, I am Marion and you can see all our names and we're so glad you joined us. I'm sorry that you —
Butler:
I've been at John Jay College all morning. So I've been doing some work and they had to finish that first.
Kwan:
Okay. Well, I'm so glad you're here, but we're about to have a break.
Butler:
I know that you're going on a lunch break for one hour. Yeah.
Kwan:
I think if I'm trying to figure out now.
Kwan:
What I like is, since there's a smaller group of us, Bill, if you don't mind, I think it would be nice for Angeline to tell us a little bit about herself. Just one minute, Angeline, like the organization you were with, the years you were there, and where it was.
Butler:
Yeah. I'm with the Nashville movement.
Kwan:
So tell me what that is.
Butler:
We were training in nonviolence in 1959 with [Reverend] Lawson. And, and our group is basically the first group in the whole student movement. Our group had [James] Bevel, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, and Marion [Barry who was later Mayor of the District of Colombia 1979-1991, 1995-1999].We were the very first group of students to organize and to attend nonviolent workshops. That's in 1959 in the fall, when Jim Lawson was a student there at Vanderbilt Divinity School. And then of course, we went home for Christmas and we came back to the workshops and the students in North Carolina sat in at Greensboro.
And we already had a tremendous amount of students who were participating and testing in downtown Nashville in 1959, but we hadn't elected to get arrested. But once we had the North Carolina group and they got so much national attention, we decided not to let that go. And so we put students out on February 1st. And we put students out on the 13th and on the 20th. And then on the 27th, we had the first major arrests in the South, which was in Nashville, Tennessee. They said there were 86 of us, but we counted 106.
Kwan:
What group were you with?
Butler:
I'm from Fisk University. The Nashville Nonviolent Central Committee. And it's from that group that grew SNCC.
Kwan:
I see.
Butler:
We had the [SNCC founding] conference in April of that year, but already students had gone to jail several times in Nashville. And Ella Baker came through Nashville and Julian Bond came through Nashville and we decided there should be a regional group. And, and so then we went about helping Ella Baker to organize that.
Kwan:
What got you involved?
Butler:
I think Marion Fuson, who was a Quaker and American Friends Service Committee. Her husband was head of the physics department in Fisk University. He had spent time in the military doing secretary and administrative work because he was a conscientious objector. So he refused to fight. So they allowed him to do that. He served his time and then he came to Nashville as a professor. And they used to have these weekend workshops, well, not really a workshop, but they would invite people to their home on Fridays. And I didn't discover it until years later that Marion [Barry] referred to us as the Nashville friends.So we would go over to their house. And for many of us, it was a great experience because we'd never been in the same environment with young white people our age, who came from different colleges across the country as exchange students to Fisk, like University of Redlands and Pomona. Candy Anderson, who married Guy Carr. She was in the group. And Paul LaPratt who eventually transferred to Fisk, he was in the group. Later on the next year, Jim Swerg was in the group, okay? With the freedom rides period. But basically, that movement got started from the Nashville group organizing nonviolent workshops and testing. Yeah.
Kwan:
Wow. Angeline, I'm going to go back and forth because you came in late, but I think it's nice for you to get to and know who Bill is and who I am. So let's go through. Bill, do you mind if we go through another one minute or two of who you are again?
Perlman:
That's fine. Yeah. I was recruited by Forman to play guitar with the Freedom Singers.
Butler:
Oh, okay. Great.
Perlman:
And I joined in April 1965, April or May, around there and just have been with it ever since.
Butler:
So, you know Matt Jones.
Perlman:
Oh, yes. Yeah.
Butler:
And Marshall [Jones].
Perlman:
Marshall, Chico and Chuck Neblett and Cordell [Reagon].
Butler:
All those guys. Yeah.
Perlman:
Yeah. And we traveled for quite a while. We were on the road and then the thing stopped, and then the whites left SNCC and we didn't do much after that for a while.
Butler:
Yeah.
Perlman:
We've gotten back together in the last 20 years or so I guess.
Butler:
Yeah.
Perlman:
I played at the 40th reunion of SNCC. We were down there.
Butler:
Where, at American Baptist Theological Seminary?
Perlman:
It was in Jackson. I can't remember.
Butler:
Oh, Jackson, Mississippi?
Perlman:
Yeah.
Butler:
Okay.
Perlman:
But you know, we're still performing when anybody will manage to hire us. And that was how I got started.
Butler:
Well, I'm in music too. I was a music student at Fisk University and I won the scholarship to Julliard in 1961. Right in the middle of the Freedom Rides.
Kwan:
Wow. What's your music? I mean, what is it?
Butler:
My voice.
Kwan:
Voice. Wow.
Butler:
Well, yeah. If you look me up on Google, you'd see I did about 143 television spots. Mainly variety television, with Carson, Cavett. Johnny Carson was very interested in what we were doing. And so when I did about my fourth television show, because I did two Nightlifes before that with Jen Murray and William B. Williams, where there was no discussion of civil rights. I was just a performer. And then when I went on Johnny Carson show, he wanted to know about the sit-ins.In fact, he was the only national host that was really interested in discussing that. So I shared with him, my background from South Carolina, our daily experiences in Nashville, in Miami, Florida, and also later on, I was arrested also in Crisfield, Maryland.
Kwan:
Bill, do you want any more to add about anything more?
Perlman:
Well it's, I've sort of said how things affected my life. It, it became a part of me and I'm still working, but in a different format, I'm now an elected official up here. So I'm sort of working from inside the system rather than the outside. And there are a lot of issues that... The area that I'm in is very small. Franklin County is the poorest county in Massachusetts and least populous. One of the advantages of working in a place like this is that every so often you can actually see something that you've accomplished. It's harder when you're working the national movement.That's been very gratifying. I try to think of no matter what comes up, what impact is it going to have, immediately for the people right around us? What is going to happen over time? What are the downsides of certain aspects? Massachusetts, along with the rest of the country recently came up with new specifications for policing. While some of them were very good in the way they wrote them, it has made hiring police officers in small communities like ours, almost impossible. The requirements are more than anybody's willing to do, but it's no less needed. I've been trying to find a balance and participate in state legislative hearings and writing some editorial kind of stuff, and making phone calls. I've been doing this now, 25 years, I've been a County Commissioner.
And so people come to me, "Would you endorse me for this?" And I will say, "Sure, I'll think about it. What's your position on whatever?" It's a game. And if you can learn how to play it, you can actually get something done. Whether you convinced to anybody of anything, as far as I'm concerned, is less important. The important thing is to get better legislation, is to get better oversight, is to hire better cops, things like that. Same within education and everything else. I'm less interested in winning hearts and minds than I am just in winning. Cause the other side doesn't play nice.
Butler:
They really aren't. You know, I often think about if my father was alive right now, how would they think about what's going on right now? You know, that's the COVID and then all the killings and then the school violence. We didn't have that in the segregated South. We had lynchings, which most of us didn't know about. People fought very hard against lynchings and stuff, but we didn't know about this young people's violence on young people.
Kwan:
Yes. And it's, it's probably a product of all the violence that's come before. That's how they react. Angelina, I'm just going to briefly tell you how I got involved.
Butler:
Okay.
Kwan:
When I graduated from college, it was one year after the three civil rights workers were slain. So it was 1965 and I was just curious. I just didn't think that I of all people could save the world. I'm not Black or white, but I went down after college and ended up with an organization called the Delta Ministry. It's a very small organization, but it's a rock solid group that's sponsored by the National Council of Churches. I didn't hear of the other groups, but I ended up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with this group and we worked very closely. Thank goodness.We're very active with all the other groups. CORE was there, COFO was there, SNCC was there, SCLC, and so forth. We were mostly stationed in Hattiesburg for the reason that the minister was interested in slow community organizing. Self-determination of the community and so forth, to learn about them and to support them, whatever they need. So the office, that was what the purpose was.
Butler:
That took a lot of courage in Mississippi.
Kwan:
Oh yeah. Anywhere in the deep South, but I didn't know it then. I didn't know there was a murder capital of the country. We were all in our twenties, I mean, most of us. My experience, I, I said earlier, was that because I grew up in a ghetto, which is San Francisco's Chinatown, I understood immediately what it was like to be in Hattiesburg, enclosed and being second class.So it was an easy transition for me, unfortunately. It was easy because of that. And I could identify and learn a lot from the Black community. I learned so much, that's how I learned about myself, through them, about humanity.
Butler:
Yeah.
Kwan:
It wasn't, it wasn't the race card. It was really more the class and how America treats minorities. I didn't know, until much later when I went back home, I was, shell-shocked like many of us and there's nobody who I can talk to. And nobody who can ask me questions because they didn't know what I went through.
Butler:
Yes.
Kwan:
Now that I'm a senior citizen, everybody wants me to talk about what it's like. And so, the second segment, we will be talking about the movement as a whole.
[BREAK]
Kwan:
Let's get to our second session. And if you can, at least five minutes, but you know, we have such a smaller group that I really am not into timing, but to stay on course. And so this second portion, session, has to do with how we see the movement as a whole, politically and socially. How would you evaluate the freedom movement? What did we achieve or fail to achieve? What could this mean for us? What lessons did we learn from it? Anyone can start.
Butler:
I think one of the earlier problems we had was that thousands of students went to jail and this also helped with a different protest in all those 2000 communities that we protested in, in the South. We were focused on changing conditions for "blacks." We were also focused on trying to improve communications between us and whites. We always felt that you needed to talk to people. You needed to listen to people, you needed to hear their views, and you needed to try to understand where they were coming from.James Bevel, for instance, even had a meeting with the KKK Grand Dragon at one point. I've never heard of any other movement where you had that kind of outreach to the other side. And KKK was totally the opposite side. And here we were as a group, reaching out. And Bevel was not afraid to do that, which was really great.
I think also that once you had simultaneous desegregation issues going on with education. In terms of Brown versus Board of Education, because in 1960 in Nashville, who only 6% desegregated, and the decision was at 1954. And then if we went furthest out, you had even fewer percentages than that. In fact, Roy Campanella said "At the rate that we are going it's going to take 94 more years to desegregate." Because all of the states in the South were putting up fights against the Supreme Court decision and delaying desegregation. And even in my community of South Carolina, I didn't remember anything real coming to fruition until about 1970, like in the schools and this kind of stuff.
And those would be the city schools, not the rural schools, because our communities didn't change in the rural community. They still remained segregated schools, even though we were busing to other Black schools that were built at that time.
For instance, I used to take the bus. I lived in Eastover, South Carolina and eventually they built a high school in Hawkins, South Carolina, which was on the other side of where we were. But before that, my parents had taken me out of the Eastover schools and sent me to Columbia, South Carolina, because C.A. Johnson was a better school. They had better teachers, they had more money, it was a city. I actually lived away from home for about three years trying to go to school there. It was segregated. I don't remember at any time that I was a student at CA Johnson that there was ever a white student enrolled.
At Hopkins High School, where I graduated from, we still didn't have any white people in that school, either teachers, faculty, or anything else. But we were busing from Eastover to Hopkins, so the rural schools remained segregated for a very long time. I did not see any kind of desegregation until I actually went to Nashville as a college student. It just wasn't in the environment. When I went to Nashville in 1957, we still had the bus segregation. We had all those issues still there. 1960 was a revolutionary year for us because things began to change, not only in terms of what we did, but own minds began to change. We decided we were thirsty for change, which is why we did what we did.
Now. It's interesting when you talk about civil rights, people always talk about demonstrations, issues, and this kind of thing. But I found over the years, after Julliard, after many experiences around the world, performing and this kind of stuff and having to come back. In the 1970s, when I went to places like UCLA, we still had racial issues. For instance, I wanted to do my graduate essay on Duke Ellington and they fought it. They would not permit me to do my Master's essay on Duke Ellington because they said he was not a "legitimate composer."
Kwan:
He wasn't a legitimate composer? At UCLA?
Butler:
He wasn't Bach. That was UCLA. That was "Ethnomusicology." And they had us dancing to Balkan music and studying Indonesia and all those things. But at the same time, when we put up a project for a Black person to write about, they said he wasn't legitimate as a musician.So I left UCLA and I transferred to Columbia and I went there from 1972 to 1974, and I got my Master's there in Ethnomusicology still, but I found myself in a better atmosphere. All of a sudden I was in a more positive atmosphere that was more open to who we were as a people. And students were fighting. They were fighting for inclusion in the curriculum.
What I'm trying to say is, when we talk about civil rights, protesting and demonstrating and going to jail and stuff, that's just one part of it. Every place I walked in my life after Fisk University, I was faced with some kind of discrimination. In a place like UCLA.
Kwan:
What year was that?
Butler:
UCLA was 1969, 1970, and 1971. I transferred to Columbia in 1972.In the entertainment business, we weren't making it there either. At that point, we didn't have literally Black people involved in television series. One of the shows that I was on, Joey Bishop's show, I did my two songs, I did my song. Then I took, I sat down on the panel and while I was there, there Margo Thomas, Danny Thomas' daughter, and Sally Fields. A commercial came for the two sort of, "girl next door" shows that they were starring in.
So when they came back from commercial to Joey Bishop, I asked that question on national television, "How come there are no Black people in television series?" Jack Carter was sitting on the right hand side of me, and Joey Bishop put his head down and for my two minutes couldn't answer. And then they went to another commercial. And Jack Carter said, "You shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have done that. They're not going to hire you anymore." And I said to him, I said, "What a way to go."
So every place I went there was, I was on the show, but they didn't want you to talk about certain things.
Kwan:
Yes.
Butler:
They just wanted you to be a pretty girl and sing songs. They didn't want you to bring up any of the real is that were bothering people. And they didn't know when they hired me, who I was and that I would have a reaction like that. Cause as far as he was concerned, I was just this beautiful girl in this extremely wonderfully, well-groomed gown, specially made. I was just supposed to be pretty and talk about lightweight things.But I wasn't supposed to talk about anything that was serious about the conditions of people. And I found that all the way through. So when I look at the civil rights movement, I look at it in every phase of my life, because it's like, I find when I go into institutions and stuff like that, let's say Cal State Northridge, they hadn't done like a Black play in 10 years before I was a professor there. And we were talking about 1976. 1976!
And when I decided it to revive Lorraine Hansberry's play Les Blancs, which dealt with the South African Apartheid, it became a very big controversy. The dean was very proud of this would-be project. And the chairperson for the Theater Department was happy that he hired me and we were definitely going to get it done. But we had a director of theater who wanted to make sure it didn't happen. So we had to call in the dean. We had to get the dean to talk to that person and to make him responsible for the success of my project, else we couldn't get it done. Every place I've gone since that time there've always been politics, inner politics within these universities.
I went into the university because my president of my university said, "Angeline, you've had a very successful career. You made more money singing than I did as the Fisk University President or the being President of the United Nero College Fund. He says with that business that you're in, it doesn't always last. You have a great background. You have Fisk, you have Julliard, you have Columbia, now let's look for security.
Kwan:
Angeline, where do you think the civil rights movement is going?
Butler:
The thing is, I'm in the classroom, I'm in the classroom and I'm teaching young minds. In my classes at John Jay, and I've been there since 2005, we have very active students who are very much involved in Black Lives Matter and, and all of the protests that come up. They even had a protest at John Jay two years ago where they wanted to replace the name of the school from John Jay to Frederick Douglass.Young people are very conscious, you know what I mean? I don't usually talk about my background that much inside of class. I teach my classes and about the last two weeks of my classes, I let them in on the sit-in movement and all those thing. They're very interested and they want to know how we maintained our discipline because a lot of their demonstrations, for instance, and I've been on a lot of those demonstrations. When we had Occupy Wall Street,
Yes. That's a good example of, you had a very mixed group of people. You had a mixed group of ages and a whole number, and we had trouble because of it. Because you had 35 and 40-year old white men who targeted the police as being the ones who were the enemies. The police were there to guard, more or less, and make sure there was no violence happening in that movement. But these young white men, they had the signs of nonviolence posted on the walls. They even had our behavior codes from 1960 on the wall. They were identifying on one level, but then that movement was run from the internet. They didn't have [crosstalk] kind of leadership.
Kwan:
All right. So, is there someone else who would like to respond to the {UNCLEAR}? Let's give each other at least five minutes. So maybe Linda?
Halpern:
Okay. So I've been very, very fortunate to end up in Oakland and at a school that we had an incredible music department [Castlemont High School]. So I liked Angeline's thing. We did musical after musical of... Oh gosh, why can't I remember the... I can remember the dances and the Castleers singing and we could put on anything. We did August Wilson. We did the musicals of Silk and Satin. Who's that? Satin, blues. Oh gosh.
Butler:
Sandal?
Halpern:
Yes. Thank you. Sandal.
Kwan:
Were you in the music department?
Halpern:
No, we had a school of performing arts at {UNCLEAR}.
Kwan:
Oh yes.
Halpern:
I was the English teacher. My best friend was the history teacher. And she married the music director. We used to laugh because her name was Tamera Reed and she went on a tour with the Castleers to Europe. She took care of the girls. And when she came back, she was Mrs. Reader. Because his name was Reader. So we did Just Keep on Singing and we researched Hal Johnson's music. And we wrote the scripts. Phil did the music. I taught all... The kids all went through our classes. I was the English teacher. She was the history teacher and kind of a logic, I guess. And then they did the music. And we had the band. That was a part of it. We had a rocking little thing out there. And then the district... Well, we were in all black school. So then the district in its wisdom switched the performing arts to Skyline, which was in the hills, which was all white. And they got the money. We lost the... we became a true flatland school. Impoverished, even our well, our football team was pretty good.Our basketball team was great. Run by a Japanese guy, Shigamatsu. And we won tournament after tournament. We were a very successful school, but little by little, the dynamic changed. It became, it went from Black to Latino. I mean, I seriously couldn't teach there anymore because even if I wanted to, because I don't speak Spanish very well. And you really almost need to be bilingual at this point. So I still worked with the teachers out there trying to get them into the communities, which are mainly from El Salvador and Honduras. Used to be mainly from Mexico, but that has shifted in the past couple of years.
So what I think if I was to evaluate what the movement did to me, for me and to me, it made me a listener and I actually do like to talk. So that's kind of hard for me. But to really listen to what people are saying. We are members of the NAACP here [in Berkeley] and Friends of Adeline [neighborhood]. I think somebody else said they were in Friends of Adeline too.
Kwan:
Gene Turitz is one of the leaders in another group and he's an active member.
Halpern:
And {UNCLEAR} and the woman Mrs. What's her name Al? Oh, I can't think of her name, but oh, I just, I had it and I lost it. It'll come again. So this... But the root, if we go to when we started getting conscious, I think it was when I was in high school and I was born Republican. My mother was Republican. My father said he never voted once FDR was there. He never voted Republican again. He was a stone cold Democrat.But I was campaign for Ed Brooks who was at that point an African American running for the Senate of Massachusetts. And I walked up to one of my classmates houses and her father was the Chief of Police. And she took that flyer I had and she threw it down and she said, "It'll be a cold day in hell before I vote for a nigger." That was Massachusetts. That was Massachusetts. So I identified with, I think it was Bill that was saying that he was in rural Massachusetts. I mean, Massachusetts in general is a Democratic state, but there are pockets that are so conservative. And I lived in one of those pockets, Hanover, Mass. And Bill, you were out somewhere in the West, right?
Perlman:
Yeah. I'm basically in the middle of nowhere out here. It's a town of 1600 people. I remember somebody asking me about diversity in our town and I said, well, we lost half our black population one day. And they said, "What happened?" I said, "Howard moved." And that was it. There was one other black person in town. So 50% pulled out and it's, been interesting because you think of Massachusetts says a great liberal stronghold, but that's out East. Not out here.
Kwan:
You look at San Francisco, we're losing blacks like crazy. High tech has moved in. There's no one can afford to even to rent much less buy. Forget about San Francisco or Marin county, of course we all know that. So it seems like it's like Angeline is saying it is insidious in every pocket of our community. That it's everywhere. It's not just in one thing and it hasn't gone away. So it seems like we all agree with that, but that's interesting. So Linda, do you want to elaborate anymore?
Halpern:
I still am in the schools. I mean, that's where I think we all have to find our little niche. I don't think we have to stay there, but I am a teacher and I had a great, great career. I loved teaching at Castlemont and I loved teaching in the school of the performing arts. And I love working with new teachers coming in. Live in Berkeley, used to live in Oakland. I mean, when I got married, we came to Berkeley. So we do live in Berkeley and we participate in the city council meetings.My husband particularly is involved in police accountability issues. And the, like you say, the gerrymandering or the red lining. I volunteer in the schools, which they won't let me do anymore. This is the first year because they won't let you in if you are not an employee. But I was tutoring reading in an elementary school and writing in a junior high. And then I worked with new teachers coming into Oakland for a little bit of money. Little, little, little bit of money.
But it's all about, it's always about equity for me. Always. Even in the program that I work in, aren't, we're trying to teach the teachers to teach through an equity lens and trying to get them to see not what's in the textbook, but who's in the class. And I always use it. Like I wasn't teaching something to somebody. I was teaching somebody something. Emphasis on the person. And trying to get, see how they learned. Were they kinesthetic learners, were they visual? What was their learning style? And seeing if I could get them further in there. Along in English with that. I'm getting off pace. Someone pull me back.
Perlman:
You asked what we did right and what we did wrong. One of the things that I think through our idealism and naivete, I think we thought we could integrate. That we could change minds that in a large area. And it was a goal, a noble goal. But I think we were kidding ourselves. And we certainly since learned that racism is pervasive, it's determined. It's damn near genetic in this country. And I think that's one of the things that certainly that I learned is that that's not going to work.We need equity rather than, I don't know what the word is, but... We have to force what we want. We're not going to be given it. And it's going to be generations before anything good happens. And the problem is that it won't happen until you get some movement in some generation. We've had some, but clearly not enough. And the radical right has been empowered.
Butler:
Yes, they've been very organized.
Perlman:
They're organized and they are brainwashed and they've used the same kind of techniques that the Germans used in terms of propaganda. And...
Halpern:
And now they're on the Supreme court.
Perlman:
Now they're on the Supreme court. So I would like to be optimistic. I appreciate people who are, I wish I was among them, but I don't see it.
Butler:
Well, you Know, I worked with a guy from almost 11 years at Metropolitan Opera and I always thought he was like very open, because he's always around these black people, going to entertainment events and stuff like that. And I was very shocked when he came out to be a Trumpite. Yeah. He invited me to the bar with him one night down here in New York and I went and I was really shocked that he was canvasing for Donald Trump. And I would never have thought that from the way he associates with us and stuff, but that's what we're talking about.It's what he's talking about too. What Bill is talking about. And it's like, you don't know who you're with, even though they are gracious to you and seem to be accepting and stuff. But when it comes down to the real practice and views, you'll find their own in the opposite corner. And that's a problem. That's a real problem. The only difference between like 1960s and now is at least they speak out and at least we know who they are. You know what I mean? Back then they hid it.
Perlman:
I spend a lot of time with, with people who support Trump. Every morning, I go to this one place and have breakfast and they it's a very conservative crowd. But we've gotten to know each other through different avenues, working together in different jobs that have nothing to do with that. And we are able to talk to each other. Because the race is not the lead issue. Getting a good hay crop in is the lead issue. When is it going to stop raining? [Crosstalk]
Halpern:
And here when is it going to start raining?
Perlman:
Right. Because you know, we've been... The phrase make hay when the sun shines is real. So, one of the things that I found interesting is that in a group they're going to be hard. They're going to... All kinds of conspiracy theories and bizarre stuff like that. When I sit together with people, one on one, there's a very different feel. And there are people who are willing to talk, willing to question what's going on. They know my position, but they're still willing to talk to me. And they say, "I understand a little bit about what you're talking about with Trump." And that surprised me, but I take a lot of time. And in cultivating these conversations, because that's the way we're going to get anything.
Halpern:
But when they go into the voting booth, even though you don't think that's... I'm still about voter registration. I'm still, I bring all the registration forms. Some of the teachers I work with who are teaching, I said, give this form to the anyone who's 16 years old and get them registered now. Even if they don't speak English, get them registered. And that I'm still into the voting. I do think it's important.
Perlman:
Oh absolutely.
Butler:
Absolutely. But if we don't get, go to the precincts and really do that basic registration and stuff, we're going to be in real trouble in the next election.
Perlman:
There's a sort of a replacement for the Vista program called AmeriCorps. And they send people out [who] are not allowed to register. They're not allowed to push their members to register. I discovered that here. I asked a couple of organizations if they would please just put some registration forms out on their front table, they couldn't do it. Because that's a federal policy that they will not let the organizations push people to register to vote.
Kwan:
I don't like that.
Halpern:
I don't either. I don't understand that.
Kwan:
That it's illegal. You're supposed to be able to do that.
Perlman:
The idea was if they weren't... They're not supposed to do anything political. So they've interpreted it that way. I don't. I think that register somebody to vote, you're not telling them how to vote.
Butler:
Exactly. That's what I tell my classes. I said it's important to use that opportunity. Now, how you vote is up to you because that's your own right. Your own right and decision.
Kwan:
I have a very different background about voting. This is just my own perspective here. When I approach Asian communities. I know why some would be afraid to pick up a voter registration form. It has to do with past repressions, from their native countries. They came from governments that are so repressive and corrupt, and not that United States is not, but they don't understand that in America, when you pick up a form, it's your freedom.But they don't know freedom. They don't know what freedom is. And so I had to explain it to them that this is a different place you're in and you do have the freedom. But it's so... The connection is very different for me. It's talking about they're in America, but there's a disconnect with not believing that they have the freedom because they're not treated like equals in America.
So how could that be any different from their old country, even though that there's more Liberty here. So I'm trying to explain the difference. But I think my personal goal is to work with young people, because they understand They didn't come from the old country. I start working with them. So that's usually where my fight is. It's more internal and it's more directed towards Asians who can see me and I can see them. And we're the same, so I can talk to them a little better. It seems like my issues are a little different, and yet they're the same. It's just that it's more elementary for me to start there.
It's like, to me, it reminds me of the early sixties. When I went down to, when I go house to house in the rural communities in {UNCLEAR} Mississippi. You go door to door and say I hate to say it. I mean, they know as much as I do that if they walk into the courthouse, they may not have a job the next day. Their house might get burned. And so I understood that. For the Asian Americans, if I walk up to them, they will understand that there's danger, perceived danger. But it's a different kind, it's not the same fashion.
So I have to switch my earphones around and say, okay, I understand what you're going through, but this is the reality. It's a different reality for me, but it's still elementary education, but it's what we were talking about the earlier session about just political education is different in different ways. Just telling people to go vote, may not be enough. Giving certain background education about the Vote is necessary to win over certain ethnic communities and then, certain economic communities.So I'm just sharing that.
Butler:
May I say something I'm very confused with Black Lives Matter. On one hand you hear people saying that's the new movement and that's replaced the student movement, but do you find Black Lives Matter very much like us? I mean, is there training going on? Is there...
Kwan:
In the Asian community? Are you speaking to me?
Butler:
In general? Because you know, it's a very big movement that's gone global, which great. And of course, the Floyd murder helped it with the global thing because they saw that happen. But the point is, I still haven't been able to get my hands on... where are the meetings going on? What kind of community saturation are they doing in all the different communities? I haven't been able to identify where they are. You know what I mean?
Kwan:
You know, for just, I'm just going to speak a little bit and the rest of you can, can speak for yourself. Young Asian Americans are for Black Lives Matter. And why not? I think it's... It benefits every race because it's why not Black Lives Matters. It's 400 plus years of suffering. The Asian Americans, Chinese Americans had it for 230 years and still counting. But Native Americans way before that, we all know that were all... Minorities all suffer and why not start with Black Livers Matter let it go as far as fast and as far reaching as it can, because it benefits all of us.
Butler:
Oh, I agree with that problem is, do you understand, when we had organizations, I could find out where the meeting was. I'm talking very practical. I do not know where Black Lives Matter meets. [Crosstalk]
Halpern:
I don't either, but I think there's three women in Oakland.
Kwan:
In Oakland that started it.
Butler:
I know the history of it and everything.
Halpern:
I know who they're or where they are.
Butler:
Well, that's what you're saying. The same thing I'm saying, right. I'm saying I'd like to reach out to Black Lives Matter, but I don't know where they are.
Perlman:
I don't know what specifically they're doing either. What is the philosophy? What is the policy? It's a great motto but what's behind it?
Butler:
And they only seem to respond to like emergency situations.
Perlman:
Yeah. And I,
Butler:
It has to be a crisis happen. Someone... But what's happening when there's not a crisis?
Perlman:
Exactly. And I just don't know what they stand for other, in a general way, but what road are they taking? Where are they going and how are they trying to get there? That's...
Butler:
And then how are they responding to community? Now believe it or not, I belong to Al Sharpton's group. And a lot of people don't like him, but the point is, I know where the meeting is. It's every Saturday morning on 135th street. I know where that meeting is and if I want to be there, I know where it is. You understand?
Kwan:
Yeah. I wonder whether I should not post as a question for the conference. I just realized we don't have check on. Angeline, do you know how to use chat?
Butler:
No. I don't know how to do anything on a computer.
Kwan:
Okay.
Butler:
Okay, I'm sorry.
Halpern:
Thank you.
Kwan:
Yeah I'm forced to ask a question. I might try and... I'll see if I can respond to all of you about that.
Butler:
See I know where Al Sharpton is and when he's doing a demonstration I'm invited to participate in that. I get his emails. I get everything that he does in his organization, I get an email about it, or I can go up there on Saturday morning and figure out what's going on. Okay. Of course they just begun to like meet in person again, because, but the point is, where does Black Lives Matter live in New York who are involved in New York? And how do I get in touch with them? And where are they meeting on a weekly basis? And what kind of community involvement do they have?
Kwan:
Okay.
Perlman:
We're told over and over again, that it's time for us to pass the torch. We're tired, we're old, we're creaky. And I want to know who I'm supposed to pass it to.
Butler:
Pass the torch too. Right? Exactly.
Perlman:
It's fine. If what they mean is we should just go home and leave the torch in the street and hope that somebody picks it up that's one thing. But I don't trust that to happen. And I don't know who's doing what anymore.
Butler:
That's what I'm saying. It's like they're using social media. Okay. And I know that's how they're contacting people, but I'm not on their list. I don't get anything from Black Lives Matter that says such and such is happening on Saturday, which gives me option of joining. You know what I mean? And I don't understand the disconnect and I'm in a major university, I'm in a major city. When the teachers have strikes and this kind of stuff. Well, I mean, I know about that because they let me know. But Black Lives.
Kwan:
I wonder whether it is not a group, but it's a motto for people to follow. And people are loving it. It's the right model and the right time for the world to, to pick it up. I don't know. It's just a guess, but I certainly will bring this issue up.
Butler:
I mean, even the Women's Movement, I get contacted about it. You understand?
Kwan:
Yeah. They're asking you.
Butler:
They're asking me to participate. Black Lives Matter? I don't think I've ever gotten an email or from them or anything, or a letter from them to residents and stuff. They're somewhere off in some strange place that I'm not a part of.
Perlman:
I'm not sure that it's a...
Kwan:
Model?
Perlman:
That it's a national organization. I think it's in different chapters and different people deal with it in different ways. Which is okay, because there are certain techniques that won't work in Brooklyn, the way they work in rural Mississippi, or, but I had just hoped that there was some kind of cohesion. That there was something common that you worked together for, and that you're able to state it to somebody.
Butler:
And that everybody involved in it knows there's a certain direction going on.
Perlman:
I mean.
Halpern:
But what's wrong with it just being a motto?
Butler:
Well, we're not a part of it. Where do we...
Perlman:
Well...
Halpern:
Well if you walk around Berkeley, there's this house around the corner that has these little cemeteries. It's Halloween. They've got these little stones and they've got the names of all the black folks, women, men, kids that have been killed. And yeah, and it's kind of an interesting to do Halloween. This is the killing of black folks and their lives matter.
Perlman:
And that, what other communities do the same thing?
Halpern:
I don't know.
Perlman:
I just... One of the things that we have to do, we've always had to do is to convince people of, at least the way I feel about it, is one of the things we have to do is to convince people that our philosophies and sense of humanity is valid. And I need to be able to have... If I just run around and say it's bad, it's bad. Eventually nobody's going to listen to me. I have to say how and why and what we can do about it and how we're going about it. And I could do that with, with SNCC. I knew what it was about. I knew what we were trying to do.And I can't do that anymore because I don't... I haven't found a philosophy. And in the same way, other than Trump, we always used to have faces that I always call that we could put it on a dart board. It was Wallace. It was Ross Barnett. I mean, these were people that we could identify and demonstrate against.
I don't know who all the enemy is now. It's more dispersed. It was very clear in Vietnam. You had McNamara and Nixon on the dartboard, but I don't know who the CEO of Citibank is, but I know whatever Citibank is doing is not doing me or anybody else any good. It's harder to focus, I think, on who and what, and if we had a couple of leaders who were strong enough to lead and coalesce some of this thing, I think we would be better off with some kind of common direction. Unfortunately, anybody who becomes that influential and powerful is killed. That's how you know, they're affected in power.
There are days I have to tell you that I think that humanity is an experiment that didn't work. I just see too much out there —
Halpern:
In humanity.
Perlman:
— is inhumane. I mean, what kind of person does it take, to kill an infant with a machete, those people exist. I don't know how you talk to people. I mean, I know that the nonviolent philosophy allowed people to talk to anybody, but I can't buy it anymore. I'm just too fed up. I just think that maybe we're beyond saving.
Butler:
Well, I can't live in a state of hopelessness.
Halpern:
Well, that's a dark note.
Butler:
I guess I feel that my main investment is with these students whose minds I have to keep training and opening, and why I don't speak about myself in the movement. I'm teaching them movement all the time because of the kinds of people I'm introducing them to, John Henry Clark, people like Cheikh Anta Diop, people like W.E.B. Du Bois, people like Mary McLeod Bethune, and Marcus Garvey. I am teaching them about people who actually did affect change, not about myself. Then they're shocked at the end of it, in the last few weeks that they discover who I am, but I'd rather have it that way because I don't want them having an expectation of me.
Halpern:
Would you say —
Butler:
Just because I have that historical past, or I might be that icon
Halpern:
— Would you say that Mississippi Freedom Summer did affect you in that way?
Butler:
Absolutely. Mississippi Freedom Summer did so much for us. I mean, it extended all the way up to Columbia University. Students fighting for inclusion of curriculum, San Francisco, UCLA. It's really funny, I ended up at UCLA at one point just after the Angela Davis thing. Yeah. So, Mississippi Freedom Summer, the head start program was very important, but then we had PUSH [People United to Save/Serve Humanity], Operation PUSH and we had —
Halpern:
— that's right. Jesse —
Butler:
We had Jesse [Jackson], and we had people in Chicago trying to really fight for black business investment and self-interest, which is what Marcus Garvey was about, and which was what Malcolm-X was about in a different sense. Malcolm-X said, if we don't invest in our own communities, we do ourselves a major disservice because, Walgreens didn't start the way it is today, it started out as a very small store and a group, and that in the black communities and stuff, we have an obligation to try to do that. Jesse tried to do some of that —
Halpern:
That's right.
Butler:
Yeah. Martin Luther King as well, because Jesse was working with Martin Luther King in Chicago.
Halpern:
He also would come out this way to stop the capital punishment every time someone was on death row.
Butler:
Yeah.
Halpern:
You'd see Jesse out at San Quentin. I took my students out there —
Butler:
Septima Poinsette Clark told me that she thought that Jesse Jackson was more like Mary McLeod Bethune than anybody in the booth.
Halpern:
Wow.
Butler:
She said that to me.
Kwan:
When I learned from heroes, they started, my heroes started with Rosa Parks, it started with Martin Luther King, of course, and his whole team that we talked about, Andrew Young and so forth, Julian Bond. Now I think about my heroes as about, a dozen people I could name who are every day people who live in Hattiesburg, those are my heroes. Now my heroes are Emmett Till's mother, Vincent Chin's mother. Vincent Chin was the Chinese American who was clubbed to death —
Butler:
Yeah.
Kwan:
— in Michigan, in Detroit. My heroes have changed.
Butler:
Yes.
Kwan:
I guess on my response to the future is, now my heroes are, hopefully my adult children who keep the world, will not know who they are, but I know. The reason why I'm saying they're heroes is because they backed me up on everything I'm doing. They want to tell the world that I was a civil rights worker, and the only Chinese American from Chinatown to do that, they want to, when I send them something, my son's already sent it out to all his friends in the east coast.I say, what are you doing that for? He says, "Because mom, I just like, I mean, you're doing such important stuff." How did they find out? It's because I raised them that way. All right. I'm their hero and they're my heroes because they are continuing the fight, but it comes in slow motion and it comes under the covers. Nobody knows what's going on, but they're raising consciousness to their next generation.
Butler:
Yes.
Kwan:
I'm sorry, but not everyone can march, not everyone can be in front of a stage. I feel like I'm still a very ordinary person, but I did make a difference in my own way. So true with each of you here —
Butler:
And we're still making a difference.
Kwan:
Yeah. [Crosstalk] struggle every day, I talk to somebody, I get very frustrated. I did leave a mark. Linda, being a teacher, you probably left more marks than I can realize, because who knows what kids do when they think about things, but you did nothing wrong, you did everything right. Hopefully one out of a drop in a big pond of pool in, in a pond, that drop might help save the earth, who knows. I'm just saying that for me, I just never saw change as, I don't think it's, Barack Obama won, but who came next, and did we lose, it's reaction from the other side.
Halpern:
That's the two steps backwards you were talking about.
Kwan:
Yeah. I mean, I cannot talk about progress, like you run a marathon. I see progress as what's in the quantity of life. What's the quality, I'm just going to pick that quality up and I'm going to keep it. That's what I'm going to do. That's what I've always been doing. And if things fail, something else will succeed, and it already has, but I just don't know what it is. I just have faith that young people's going to carry it, because what about our grandparents and our parents, they went through hell, especially if you're a minority, but look who carried the torch, we did.We won some fights. I'm not trying to be philosophical, I'm just looking at reality. There's going to be bumps, and there's always going to be hilly bumps, and here we are. I thought that with Barack Obama, everything's going to be rosy, but there is again no light at the end of the tunnel, we just have to keep on going. I think when we get too complacent, we lose. I'm not going to lose. I just can't do that.
Butler:
I'm amazed at how many black people are over on, tuned into the radical right.
Kwan:
Yeah. Me too.
Butler:
I'm amazed. I'm amazed —
Halpern:
And discouraged.
Butler:
— and discouraged. It's, it's amazing, those hip hoppers and stuff like that, who have a very different value from us.
Kwan:
Yeah.
Butler:
Voted for Trump in Compton, with all of their terrible conditions out there. Cause they thought that somehow he is, they're fascinated by the periphery of a person, money.
Halpern:
Right.
Butler:
He didn't have as much money as he thought he said he had.
Halpern:
He's also got a lot of hate speech.
Butler:
Then look at all the people that went to jail, I've never seen a political giant who's, so many people in his staff went to prison. Now Joe Biden has got a really difficult job. I don't see that the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is going to get through Senate, no way. I'm very sad about that, because we need it.
Kwan:
We sure need that.
Butler:
We need that. The only way we're going to get anything through, is we have to vote those guys out of office.
Kwan:
That's right.
Perlman:
That's if they allow us to vote at all.
Kwan:
What?
Perlman:
I said, that's if they allow us to vote at all.
Butler:
At all, with all the restrictions and everything. Yes.
Kwan:
Yeah.
Perlman:
I just have a little trouble with finding a lot of optimism here.I work as hard as I possibly can and do what I possibly can do. I don't know, sometimes I wonder why, but I do have grandchildren, but I can't see the way. I can't see the progress, what we won in the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act is slowly being just chipped away.
Butler:
Right. Since 2013, since the Supreme Court dropped, section 4(b) out of 5 [sections in the Voting Rights Act].
Perlman:
I think, we had our optimism of saying, okay, we can get this and then people will pay attention to it and they'll follow the law. Well, that was a nice thought, but it didn't happen. That's where I'm at.
Perlman:
But if I may ask a question and look for the three of you for some help. I have a friend whose daughter, I guess she's about 30, is white, she's single, she's a recovering alcoholic, and a teacher, and her parents are what I describe as run-of-the-mill racist. They're not militant, they're not going to go kill anybody, but they have really bad ideas about who people of color are. Now, this woman is in the process of adopting a black child, young boy, and she knows nothing about the society. I'm wondering, I worry about this child who may end up getting in all kinds of trouble and not understanding why, because he's never, you know. How do you approach her and convince her that she needs to learn something about black history?
Halpern:
Well, let me ask you this, do you think they will allow her to adopt this child?
Perlman:
Yeah. I happen to know the case worker pretty well, and they're very happy with her. She's often taking two or three kids at a time —
Halpern:
— in fostering them?
Perlman:
— into her house and fostering and handling some really difficult cases. They're thrilled with her and she's smart and energetic and all that. I've asked her case workers what they do about trying to teach somebody and I don't get a good answer. I'm wondering how you approach it? What do I give her to read? What do I give her to, do anything with? That's my dilemma, sitting outside of this and looking in.
Kwan:
Just for a general response, because I don't have any specific, I have two adopted kids.
Perlman:
What?
Kwan:
I have two adopted kids, but they look like me.
Perlman:
Yeah.
Kwan:
I know that out there in the adoption world, there are books about interracial adoptions, and some of them are pretty good. You might want to check into that, but that's, I don't have a real answer to what you're saying, I think it's —
Perlman:
I know that the state has no specific program.
Kwan:
Yeah. There are groups, there are adoption groups. I know, but I don't know what's out there for her.
Perlman:
Yeah. Okay.
Kwan:
Can't say much. Is the community she's living in —
Halpern:
I can't believe that.
Kwan:
Go ahead.
Halpern:
No, I was just going to say, I can't believe they're not doing an investigation of her, and her thoughts, and her lifestyle. I mean, I don't think she'd get away with that in this area.
Perlman:
They vetted her very carefully before they started allowing her to take foster children and she passed with flying colors. She's certainly somebody that I would trust absolutely with foster children, she's responsible and right thinking. I just know that her, a lack in her life is, much contact with black people or knowledge about out the history. I just think that the child's going to be raised with love, it's going to be raised with attention and all that. That's all well and good, but there's a piece missing, I think. I'm just trying to figure out how maybe to give her a hint as to where to go look to fill it.
Butler:
Well, I'm an adopted child.
Perlman:
Yeah.
Butler:
12 days old.
Perlman:
Yeah.
Butler:
When they adopted me and it was a black family that adopted me, but we didn't have the quote "race card" or the lack of cultural background or anything, but even so, just being adopted and not knowing who your family trees are, creates its own very far removed gap from the people that you are with. You'll always have a life and thoughts that they can never get into.
Perlman:
Yeah.
Butler:
I didn't meet my mother until I was 27 years old. I met my father when I was 28. It was hard those early years, very, very hard not knowing where I had come from.
Perlman:
Yeah. Well, fortunately, this child does. The mother is around, but incapable of caring for him. I mean, I think that that interracial adoption is one of the better things that's happening, that's allowed to happen. I just worry about how this child is going to deal with the world, not having been given any background in his own identity, so to speak. How will he fit in, in a society he wouldn't fit in?
Kwan:
Ever since my adopted children were infants, they knew all their lives that they are adopted and they are loved, but I also made it very open for them when anytime they're ready to look for their own parents, if they want to. They knew that from the get go, and there's always been an open channel with the Department of Social Services where I got them.
Perlman:
Yeah.
Kwan:
So I just made sure that my responsibility was to keep it honest and open. My children, one is approaching 40 and one's 36, and they're realistic about who they are.And they're okay. With issues, one has more issues because he couldn't find, it's hard for him to find his birth parents, but he's dealing with it. We are such a close family that he's going to be okay, but there is always going to be that empty spot in him. My daughter doesn't care, she's happy as a Lark, not knowing. She did find who her mother was and where she lives, and she's fine. Everybody comes out differently, but the important thing is for the parent, the adoptive parent, I think needs to be honest. When the kid is ready, the kid is ready. Some are not. So just to be honest and know that it's going to be, it might be a problem. I just have to leave it where it is.
Kwan:
Do you want to have a break in about five minutes? I have never, we have never had short breaks and I apologize if you needed a break. I have forgotten. I got so involved in what you're saying, I didn't want to break.
Perlman:
Yes. 6:00 Eastern Time is when it's supposedly over, 3:00 Pacific. I'm looking at the schedule here.
Butler:
It's been very good meeting you all.
Halpern:
Yes. Can I respond too?
Butler:
I just had my 80th birthday, two weeks ago, September 20th.
Halpern:
Happy birthday.
Kwan:
Happy birthday. Wow. This movement is keeping us young.
Halpern:
That's right.
Butler:
I'm still teaching.
Kwan:
Oh wow.
Butler:
I have three classes at John Jay, and I'm still looking for work in show business.
Kwan:
Wow.
Butler:
I'm still designing projects.
Kwan:
Oh, I got to get in to your website.
Butler:
Yeah. All you have to do is go to Google and just put my name in, Angeline Butler.
Kwan:
Okay.
Butler:
The Actors Fund of America just did a full month project on me. It's called, Performing Arts Legacy.
Kwan:
Mm.
Butler:
And {UNCLEAR} included.
Kwan:
Well, it's been a privilege to be able to meet you all. I didn't know that there's so many famous people around.
Butler:
Bill, what's your last name?
Perlman:
Perlman. P-E-R-L-M-A-N.
Kwan:
I will be sending, Angeline. I will be sending you everyone, our groups emails. No one has said no. So I will follow up. I, personally, this is selfish on my part. I would love to see what you guys are doing, it will give me hope.
Butler:
Right now I'm teaching, but soon will be more active again.
Kwan:
It'll be great. I will send you all a follow up.
Halpern:
So I have, my friend, I hate to say it my best friend, but she adopted her child, she's African American, she and three others. Four of them used the same adoption.It was from Indiana. The thing is, well, they didn't all use the same adoption agency, but the three of them found their birth mother and were in Oakland, their birth mother was in San Francisco.
[Najah?]'s birth mother, my goddaughter's mother is in Indiana, and she's never met her. She's never found her. The other three found theirs in San Francisco, having they were in Oakland, but because they know who their mother is —
— there's somehow a security there. It's like they found from which they came. And [Najah?] my goddaughter remains absolutely chronically, acutely shy.
I mean, she's pushing, she's 27. And she still can't speak. I mean, she works in labs. She's working in a laboratory in Birmingham, Alabama. She works on the germs, the COVID, all of that stuff by herself. She lives by herself and her dog, cannot come out of the shell at all. In a way, the more she knows about just knowing where she comes from, I think that will help.
Perlman:
Yeah. Well, I mean, this is a very different situation. The mother is around, the child knows the mother. They have some visitation, but the child's not getting any help knowing what it's like to be black. It's a world that he's going to face discrimination at some point, it's just inevitable. I just think he would to be better off if you had an understanding of why he is facing this, and a little bit about how to deal with it.
Halpern:
Books you will, there's a lot of children's books, literature, I mean, not biographical, but just get him to read. He'll explore.
Perlman:
Yeah. I know. It's just a matter, and one of the things that I'm pushing is for her to read. So I was asking, in some ways define suggestions as to what —
Halpern:
Tony Morrison.
[End]
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