[Lightly edited for flow and clarity.]
Talbe of Contents:
Beginnings
Education
Working in Birmingham
NAACP and Becoming a Voter
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
Birmingham Police
Guarding Rev. Shuttlesworth
Back of the Bus
Airport Segregation
Freedom Riders
1963 Protests
Being Fired
MUSIC:
Sweet in the morning
Oh, Lord
It's sweet in the morning
Sweet in the morning
Horace Huntley, Interviewer:
Mr. Joe Hendricks from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's, The Oral History Project. I'm Dr. Horace Huntley. We're at Miles College. Today is June 23rd, 1995. Mr. Hendricks, thank you for taking your time out to come and sit and talk with us today. What I'd like to do initially is just start with some general kinds of questions about your background. Tell me a little bit about your parents. Where are your parents from?
Joe Hendricks:
My parents were raised in Green County. A place they called Boligee. South.
Huntley:
Boligee, Alabama. Near Mantua, Alabama.?
Hendricks:
Yes.
Huntley:
Yes. Okay. Were you also born in Boligee?
Hendricks:
Right.
Huntley:
Okay. How many brothers and sisters did you have?
Hendricks:
I had nine. It was nine of us, eight brothers, four sisters.
Huntley:
Okay. Where did you fit in there? Were you the youngest?
Hendricks:
I'm close somewhere in the seventh child, or eighth, somewhere in that anyway.
Huntley:
I see. And tell me a little about your parents' education. How much education did they have?
Hendricks:
Well, it wasn't very much education going with my parents, because my parents' daddy and mother was under slave masters and out of that they had to get whatever was pretty well left. And they was on the Hoover days [the Great Depression 1928-1933]. Back in that day, back when there wasn't anything very much for Black people to do, especially on the farm. And they didn't have anything to get any education with. Matter of fact, even after I got up, it was left to a community to educate a child, not a family.
Huntley:
How do you mean it's left up to the community?
Hendricks:
Okay. When they met [in church] like we meet on Sunday now, they would raise money to send that good woman off in college, so she could continue her education along with the community. It wasn't enough money more or less for most families in no home there too much for to send a kid to school. They first started by the churches and the community getting involved with a kid, when you found a good student. So out of that, it wasn't any chance for very much education, because under the slave master, it wasn't allowed.
Huntley:
That's right. In fact, it was against the law to teach Black people to read and write. What about their occupations? What kind of work did [your parents] do?
Hendricks:
They were farming, only thing that they had, and maybe go out to cut timber in the winter, to do something like that. And that's about all they had to do with farming.
Huntley:
Was your father a farmer? Did you have a farm?
Hendricks:
My father was a farmer. He did.
Huntley:
And your mother worked at home, I assume. Did she work outside of the home?
Hendricks:
At that point, there were no safe thing, nobody worked at home. Everybody farmed in our house. Mother went to field, daddy went to field and the children went to field. They put me in the field when I was five years old and I've been there ever since.
Huntley:
But did you own your own farm? Did your family own the farm?
Hendricks:
No.
Huntley:
Okay. Were you sharecropping? They rent something and pay so much a year.
Huntley:
I see. And tell me a little about your education.
Hendricks:
My education was, I went to James Wood Junior High and I went to the ninth grade and that was the method of that school. So after that, I came to Birmingham, after I —
Huntley:
After ninth grade you came to Birmingham? Did you attend school here in Birmingham?
Hendricks:
No, no, no. I came here and started to work.
Huntley:
Oh, I see. Tell me, what do you remember about your school?
Hendricks:
The school that I went to? Well, the school was set up fine. It was set up first at a` —
Huntley:
Tell me a little about what the school was like. Tell me what the school was like. What do you remember about your school?
Hendricks:
Going to school there, they had teachers, very some, because at that time, anybody who finished high school seemed to have been teachers because it was into the area where very few people went to college. And more or less our teaching were from 12th grades [up] to a BS degree. And that's what more or less they had to offer.
Huntley:
How regular did you attend school? Were you in school every day for nine months out of the year? How did that process work?
Hendricks:
Well, my schooling was very scarcely done because I went to school three months out of a year. And most other time, until I got 14 years old, I was out of school. I only went about three months because everything was real bad and we didn't have the sufficient clothes and things to attend as we should have. So those kinds of things kind of throw things kind of rough. After 14, then I started going pretty regular after that.
Huntley:
And after school, after ninth grade, you left and came to Birmingham. What were the circumstances? Why did you come to Birmingham?
Hendricks:
There wasn't any money [at home] much. And I felt that I'd come here because I had some brothers here, had left, and they was doing pretty well and I said I'd come here too.
Huntley:
So what was your first job when you came to Birmingham?
Hendricks:
I came here and went to Jim Dandy [grain and animal feed company] and stayed there for 38 years.
Huntley:
Oh, is that right? You started at Jim Dandy and was there for 38 years, never had another job?
Hendricks:
38 years. And worked there until they closed, left there and I went to Lumberjack, where they prepared meet for the market. And I left there and went to Hayes Aircraft and that was about it until I started working some for myself.
Huntley:
I see. So when coming to Birmingham, you came to Birmingham then in the mid 40s?
Hendricks:
1946.
Huntley:
In 1946. At that time, I guess the NAACP probably was the movement in Birmingham. Did you get involved with NAACP?
Hendricks:
Yes, I was involved with Mr. [W.C.] Patton before the movement some. And then when the movement started, I thought that was the biggest thing really to help out people. So that's what I did. Got with them and tried to do whatever I could.
Huntley:
What community did you live in the '40s, '50s, and early '60s?
Hendricks:
14th Street and between 3rd and 4th Avenue across from Edward Chevrolet.
Huntley:
All right. That's really in the Civil Rights District now, right? Right near the Civil Rights Institute. Okay. Did you become a registered voter and what were the circumstances?
Hendricks:
Yes, as soon as we could. We had a lot of hassle with it. Registration started — they give us a real hard time. We had to allocation to [inaudible 00:10:16], [names of] all of the senators that we had in Washington, all of the [elected] officers in Montgomery, our Birmingham District, all those kinds of questions we were to answer before we could vote.Then after we got into that, then some people could pretty well handle it pretty good and we was voting and getting into it. And [the white authorities] felt that we [shouldn't] be making any progress so they put the damper on and they start asking questions [in the voter registration process] that wasn't any answers, they would pass —
Huntley:
What kind of questions were asked?
Hendricks:
They would ask you like, "How high is height? How far is distance? How many bubbles in the bar soap?" And those kinds of questions and that put the damper on to start with. After that, then after we got some clearing on to go ahead to move that, then we moved into the area of getting some voters qualified.
Huntley:
Right. Do you remember the day that you qualified to become a voter?
Hendricks:
No, really, as years pass you don't keep up with the day after day.
Huntley:
But you do remember some of the questions that were asked you in qualifying you to vote?
Hendricks:
Yeah. Those are the questions, some of the things we ran into in the process of it.
Huntley:
Right. In 1956, the NAACP was outlawed from operating in the state of Alabama and that same week the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) was organized. Were you involved in the initial organization of the movement?
Hendricks:
I didn't hold a office, but I did go to the meeting and I was active from the day that it started because everything went well, I thought. And I thought that was the biggest thing and the best thing for us, that had ever happened on my part. So I gladly started taking part and stayed with it as long as it was seen [by] me doing something worthwhile.
Huntley:
What do you remember about the first days of the movement?
Hendricks:
Well, I think the first days of the movement they said they're going to meet somewhere and they finally end up meeting at, I believe it was Sardis Church and they organized there. And from that, they went forward. I believe that was something like '56. And from that day they started meeting and later on they start every Monday night we'd have mass meeting and everybody was looking forward to Monday night.
Huntley:
When you attended the mass meetings, how would you describe the typical mass meeting? What was it like?
Hendricks:
Well, the mass meeting was set up on mostly what we know based on prayer and someone would speak and we eventually got a musical department and we had a mass choir and these kinds of things. That's what it was pretty well based on. And they would take up collection and this is the forum that we used to fight the cases in court. [Referring to school desegregation, anti-segregation, and legal defense cases.]
Huntley:
Right. Now the meetings, some people have described the meetings to be revival sessions. There would be preaching. There would be people that testified, testifying in relationship to what they had experienced. Reverend Shuttlesworth was speaking, others would speak as well.
Hendricks:
Well, they would have a speaker every night. It was based on the same operation as pretty well a church service. That's what it was. And we would have a minister and the choir and devotion with prayer and those kinds of things.
Huntley:
Were police present at the meetings?
Hendricks:
Yes. Most policemen was outside at some point, but we didn't feel that they were there for the right purpose. So we had our own guards along with the policemen on the outside. We somewhat always pretty well stayed outside with the policemen, where the mass meeting —
Huntley:
Did you look at the policemen as being there to protect you?
Hendricks:
We didn't feel like that was the purpose of them being there. And we'd tell them sometimes, "We appreciate you being here but we don't feel comfortable with you," just without being somewhere to know what's going on, what I said.
Huntley:
Were there any instances, for instance, on the way to the mass meetings or after the mass meetings, when you were headed home, that you may have been stopped by the police?
Hendricks:
Well, I was going to guard duty to Reverend Shuttlesworth house when I was stopped by the policeman and they asked me for my driver's license and I pulled out the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights card and give them that. So about 15 cars of policemen, in a dark place, you couldn't see anything and they said to me, "Give me your driver's license." And it wasn't courteous at all and [he] was using the word "nigger" and this kind of thing. And I was kind of shook up.
Huntley:
Why did you give them your movement card?
Hendricks:
Well, I couldn't see anything.
Huntley:
Oh, so it was a mistake.
Hendricks:
When I went for the billfold [wallet], the movement card was hard, like the driver's license with the little plastic. The driver's license had plastic hard and I just felt something hard because there wasn't no light. When I come out, and then he shined a light on it. He said, "Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights" rather than "driver's license." I thought it was a driver's license when it wasn't.
Huntley:
Were you afraid at that point?
Hendricks:
Yes.
Huntley:
You said there was 15 police cars?
Hendricks:
The way they surround me, I know it wasn't a good sign. They just pulled around me and stopped real quick and I know it wasn't a good sign, and where they stopped me at was in real dark, no lights at all. So they seemed to meet and they said to one another out there said, "What we got to do with this nigger?"The other one said, eventually I heard him say it, "If we kill him, then what are these other niggers going to think what belongs to this movement?" So at that point I [thought], "This is just it." And then when they finally made their suggestion, one of them asked the question, "If we kill him, then if it leads back to us, then what these other going to think?" So they finally said, "Well, we better let him go because if it leads back to us, then we going to have to answer to the [Unclear]." So they let me go.
Huntley:
So actually, the card probably saved you that night, rather than —
Hendricks:
Yes, I think the card was in my favor. But my feeling, it wasn't. But sometime God has a way, that you don't have, to get things done. That's my feeling. That was really what I ended up saying afterwards.
Huntley:
So you then were one of the guards for Shuttlesworth home and church and I assume other places as well. Can you tell me how that operation was set up? What was the —
Hendricks:
The next door neighbor, next door to Reverend Shuttlesworth house, we had a screened-in porch where you could see out of the porch all the way around. And we would sit straight across from the church and we could see on the side and all the way on both sides of the church and the front. And then we had a fence on the back. So that's what we would sit in and we could stay there if it was raining or whatever, and be able to see. And we was close enough to the church to see anything that goes on.
Huntley:
Were you armed? Did you have arms? Did you have guns?
Hendricks:
We had a few shotguns hid out. That's all.
Huntley:
Did you ever have the occasion to have to use any of the guns?
Hendricks:
No, we didn't. We had occasions where maybe someone might have — [We] thought that [someone] had bombs brought there and the man said he wanted to get into the church so the preacher could pray for him. He had a whole five gallon of dynamite under a raincoat.
Huntley:
Was this a white man?
Hendricks:
White male. When we pursued to find out what he had or check him out, then he would never let us get close to him, so he finally tried to take off and ran. And he dropped it in the street and blew the whole, I guess six feet or something like that, four to six feet in the street out there, while he dropped it.
Huntley:
You were on guard the night that this happened?
Hendricks:
Yeah.
Huntley:
And you approached him and he wouldn't allow you to get very close to him and then he ran?
Hendricks:
I believe the fellow named John L. Lewis did close then on him more so.
Huntley:
I see.
Hendricks:
We called him that. I don't know what his name was, but all of us called him John L. Lewis [the name of a famous militant union leader]. He was out there too. So he closed in on him pretty close and somehow he dropped this down by — It blew the windows out the church and big hole in the street.
Huntley:
Were there any other encounters that you had while you were on guard duty, that you remember?
Hendricks:
Well, we had several cases where they would come out there with threats, but you couldn't pursue anything. Our job was to try to stay away from trouble, not make it.
Huntley:
Right. I know that you were arrested once because you sat on a bus.[After the Supreme Court granted victory to the Montgomery Bus Boycott by overturning Montgomery Alabama's bus-segregation ordinance, Birmingham revised its similar segregation law to remove references to race and granting bus drivers (all of whom were white) the authority to tell passengers where to sit. Passengers who disobeyed a driver's instructions were subject to arrest. In October of 1958, Rev. Shuttlesworth and ACMHR supporters were arrested for defying that ordinance when they refuse a driver's order to move to the back of the bus. A few days later, three of the ministers who led the Montgomery Bus Boycott met with Shuttlesworth at his home Birmingham. The police burst into his home without a warrent and arrested the three ministers on charges of "vagrancy."]
Hendricks:
Yeah, the first year.
Huntley:
Can you describe that experience to me?
Hendricks:
Well, I came through town and they were on every corner.
Huntley:
Who are they?
Hendricks:
White brothers, white people had congregated on corner and they had chains and billy clubs and sticks and they said to one another, "What time's Shuttlesworth going to get here?" [Referring to the publicly announced plan to integrate the busses.] What they called him.And I go to the next corner, up to the next corner and they was asking for him. So I then turned and went on out to Shuttlesworth house and I said to him, "This is the wrong day for you. You will give me that pad, let me go to town." He said, "Well, what about your job?" I said, "Well, your job won't mean as much as your life or whatever those people have planned. This just ain't the right day for you." So I pursued to go and follow through with whatever he had planned, and what I felt was best that I should do rather than let him walk into that kind of situation.
Huntley:
And what had he planned for that day that you eventually did? What had he planned? You went on to do what he had planned for that particular —
Hendricks:
No, I was planning to go with him anyway, and after it was seemingly going to make a problem for him, then I was willing to do whatever was necessary to do on my part.
Huntley:
Did anyone else go with you?
Hendricks:
Yes, we had, I guess, 15 to 20 people. I don't know exact, at least 12. To go to jail that day.
Huntley:
Okay. How did it actually happen? What did you do to be arrested?
Hendricks:
Well, we went and sat on the bus and the bus driver said, "Move to the back." And we said, "We are comfortable where we is. I don't see any reason why we should go to the back. We paid our fare and we feel that we are comfortable where we're sitting."And we stayed where we're sitting. I caught a bus going to Ensley and instead of them taking me to enter, they took me to the bus terminal and pulled us up in between some more buses there and called the policemen before we left town, called the [inaudible 00:25:13] and they was the one ordered them to not go on the route, to take us down to the bus terminal. And from that, they called the paddy wagon to take us to jail.
Huntley:
They arrested all 14 or however many it was?
Hendricks:
All the people that was on the bus, what was other side this Black/white boat.
Huntley:
Right. So how many days did you spend in jail?
Hendricks:
Five days and six nights, but the worst part of it was they sent us and then the jury turned around and said, "Sent them back a day." The last night was sent us back to jail before the respect he had for the other jury. He didn't bring us back to court the next day, which I never did understand.
Huntley:
What do you mean the other judge? What happened to the other judge?
Hendricks:
The one who sent us, sent us back to jail overnight and then we had to come back to court the next morning before another judge, and he released us after that, for some reason, I don't know.
Huntley:
Were you ever arrested at any other time?
Hendricks:
I don't think I was arrested any other time.
Huntley:
Did you take part and sit in out at the airport?
Hendricks:
Well, they didn't arrest us at the airport. At the airport, it was a matter of trying to be served as any other citizen in an airport restaurant. And they refused to serve us for a whole week.So that day, we set up three groups. The first group would go on in when they opened, the second group would come on at 10 and I happened to be on at 10 to 12. Mamie Brown and Jim Henry and Joe Hendricks and I believe Hattie Felton, I think that right, but I know Mamie and Joe were two, three of the people.
But instead of them serving us — I think a ham sandwich and a drink is what we ordered. It was $1.85, but the manager came out and instructed them to charge us $5.85 for a $1.85 sandwich.
[$1.85 in 1958 would be equal to $21.60 in 2026, $5.85 would be equal to $63.81.The state of Alabama and the city of Birmingham had laws requiring that public facilities like lunch counters and restaurants be racially segregated. But federal regulations and Supreme Court decisions prohibited segregation in facilities that engaged in inter-state travel such as airports and bus depots. So the airport was technically complying with the federal rule by serving Hendrick and his companion, but using arbitrary pricing to enforce segregation.]
So some of them didn't want to pay it, so I offered whoever didn't want to pay it, I'd pay it if she'd give us a receipt. So she pursued that she would. And whoever didn't want to pay it, I went on and paid it. And that was public accommodation she said. And she didn't feel like she should serve us and she felt that we were special guests, so she charged us $5 extra. So we paid it and we took it [to] the court and Constance Marley represented that case and she did real well.
[Probably referring to NAACP Legal Defense fund attorney Constance Baker Motley. She was the first Black Woman to argue cases before the Supreme Court — winning nine out of the 10 civil rights cases she argued — and going on to serve as a federal judge in New York.]She really represented us. And wherever she is now, I can appreciate the way she done it, because she turned and give all of the lawyers which were there to sit in on the case, every book that was in the library, she asked them to go get it and then she turned and give them the book she had.
And then she went from page to page which protected the public accommodation and she turned to them and give them her book and she said, "Article 6, paragraph 7, page 26," and she give the statement through the whole thing without reading any of it. So she really knew what she was doing.
Huntley:
She knew the law. But you used that sandwich, that $1.80 sandwich that you paid $5.80 for, you used that as evidence in that case?
Hendricks:
This were, I think, the best case for the people because it read that no Black or white can be seated in no public building in the state of Alabama. And that's what they had on as law.
Huntley:
Can be denied a [inaudible 00:30:17].
Hendricks:
Well, if the person who ran the restaurant wanted to serve you, they would be in violation of the state law. So this came to the test and we won this. So this was a big effort, I thought.
Huntley:
I see. In 1961, we had a group of people called Freedom Riders who started their trip in Washington DC and was headed to New Orleans. And when they arrived in Alabama, some things took place. You played a role in that, can you explain that to me? What role did you play?
Hendricks:
After these people had been there for something like a week, three or four days or something, [in Anniston Alabama].And I felt that they was trapped there and I [inaudible 00:31:18] the leader about it, who was Reverend Shuttlesworth. And he said if I felt that way or if we felt that way, I think we should go. He think somebody should go check on them. That's the way he put it. So we pursued to go over there. And those people were bishops, seemed to have been mad about something. I don't know what. And they had formed a white people on the street out there to stand over us with guns and intimidate us.
Huntley:
You mean this is in Anniston?
Hendricks:
In Anniston.
Huntley:
Okay. Just before you get to Anniston though, how was the decision made that you were going to Anniston and how many people went with you?
Hendricks:
Well, we formed a carpool to go there to pick them up by car.
Huntley:
How many cars did you take?
Hendricks:
We had 15 or more cars and we went there to pick them up.
Huntley:
How many people were you going to pick up?
Hendricks:
Well, we carried one person to a car, not more than two, because we left space for the people who were there, if we could get them to bring them back. So that's where we went.
Huntley:
Was there any difficulty in getting them to come back with you or was there something —
Hendricks:
We had difficulty out of the sheriff's department. The sheriff's department, at that point, was on duty at the hospital. They had them in the basement at the hospital.
Huntley:
Oh, they were not at the bus station, they were at the hospital?
Hendricks:
Yeah. Downstairs.
Huntley:
It was because they had been beaten and they'd been treated at the hospital?
Hendricks:
Right. They were downstairs in the basement at the hospital and we couldn't get in there until these sheriffs let us in. And they made us stop out on the lot before we got to the hospital and we had to communicate with them. So I asked the other people to stay back because the tension was so high and the people were so brutally mad, it seemed to me, and they had all those guns. So I asked the other people to not go and let me go up and see if I could not get them relief. So he finally said to me, "If you want to take the chance, I wouldn't do anything to help you. I wouldn't protect you even if something would happen to you on this hospital yard, you're on your own."
Huntley:
So in addition to the sheriffs and police that were there, there were other whites who were mingling in that area?
Hendricks:
Yes. There was other whites on the street before we got on the lot, had stopped us and stood over us with those all kind of guns. I had a flat and they showed me the whole time I was fixing my flat and they ran me out to the service station and wouldn't let the people in the service station fix it. So we pursued to go ahead and get my spare out of the trunk and fix it that way. And they just stood there with the guns as if they was out there hunting for us or something, as we were some good animal or something.
Huntley:
Now, Birmingham was about 60 miles from Anniston. How did you know that the people were in Anniston and stranded?
Hendricks:
Well, it was on the news and by me being active in the movement, we knew that they were there and we had location of where they were.
Huntley:
Now, were these Black people or white people that were stranded in Anniston?
Hendricks:
Black and white. We had even four white ladies in the group. And the whole men's who were with me was actually afraid to let them ride back because it was so much animosity and so much bitterness there. I just taken the initiative to load them in my car, the white ladies, and then took my best friend's car, which was Forrest Washington, and we got them back to town. It was so much, no one wanted the white ladies in that car.
Huntley:
Why not?
Hendricks:
Because of the guns and the way the people was acting and the way they were treating us. So that was the reason. And by them being white ladies in a Black man's car, riding down the street by these guns and all these people and where you know how they feel about that, that was the reason.[Affluent southern white women often hired Black chauffeurs to drive them. But a Black man in a car with a white woman who was not his employer risked being summarily lynched by white racist mobs and police intent on brutally enforcing savage racial codes that barred any social or romantic relationships between Black men and white women. So because of the white mob in Anniston, Hendricks probably turned his car over to the white women Freedom Riders to drive themselves in convoy with the Black-driven cars Birminghan.]
Huntley:
And you had 60 miles of rural route to get between Anniston and Birmingham, right?
Hendricks:
So they came back to Birmingham and when I got here, I had the same problem. No one wanted to deal with the white ladies. Then nobody would take them. I said, "Well, then all white ladies load back in my car, come and go home with me." They hadn't had a bath. They hadn't had anything of that sort. So I take them home, and my wife, I told her to go in there and make a way from them to take a bath, give them some clothes. She give all of them something to put on and change in. They put the clothes on, wore it back home and mail them back. That cleared that up.
Huntley:
What part of Birmingham did you live in at the time?
Hendricks:
Over in Titusville. Hunters Circle.
Huntley:
All right. So you brought them to your house. Were you approached at all by the police when you got into Birmingham? Did they know that you had gone to Anniston and you were coming back with the Freedom Riders, with white women in your car? And did they approach you or did you have any difficulty once you got back to Birmingham?
Hendricks:
No, I didn't have no difficulty after I got here. Somehow I have been blessed that difficulty would go up to a point and I feel that somehow God has always held it off for some reason. I have never been hurt violently. I have seen everything up to that, but I have never been really hurt. I've been pushed, I've been doing a few things like that, but to be really struck, like I've looked and see them do other people, I've never been hit. I've seen them hit other people.
Huntley:
So you've been rather fortunate in that regard.
Hendricks:
Right. You've never been attacked.
Hendricks:
I feel that the prayer I prayed and the prayer that I have said have been answered to that point. And that's my feeling. I don't feel that it's nothing I've done that has been so protected for me, but I feel that outside of me, that somebody was big enough to really get it done through him. And that's my feeling. I don't feel even today that I am critic for nothing that has been done, but only through what I've been allowed to do as a tool and instrument for Him. I've heard the impact of Dr. King with the same idea, don't give me the credit. And if you ever get yourself into it, you'll find that you don't want credit. I'm not here feeling that I don't have any credit for what happened.I feel that the glory to God and glory to whatever was bigger than me, somewhere, something happened bigger than me to make it be what it was, because I've been shot at, I've been missed, I've been talked about in the death row line and it has been so before it got to me. The bullet has been twinked before it hit me and somehow I feel that it's just one of those things that somebody did something that had something to do with it more than me. Now, that's my feeling.
Huntley:
Right. Did you participate, I'm sure you did, in demonstrations during the 1963 marches, between April and May of 1963, the demonstrationa —
Hendricks:
I was even out there when we set up the stratic [strategy?] for downtown sit-ins. When they set up that stratic, there was a man sitting out there with overalls on, which wasn't seemingly having anything to say. And he came out and set up the stratic to get downtown. Everybody go out there — remember when [they] knocked Fred down with the [fire department water] hose and everybody go out there — they just turn them over with the hose.So [he] ain't sitting out there without — Because he wasn't even thinking about anything. And he got up, he said, "Let me help." So he stood up, he said, "Oh, y'all lineup," he said, "Give me four men over here, four men over here, four men over here, and all y'all ladies get in the middle." And when he set it up like that, then they took off, said, "Now, y'all going through." Said, "When the water hose hit you, all of you, lean this way." And when the water hose hit them, they ain't start walking. Like I said, the people, when they organize the strength against the other person, they went on downtown.
Huntley:
Who was the man in the overalls?
Hendricks:
I can't think of his name, but all I know, at that point, he had on some overalls and sitting there just an ordinary person. But that's the way we got [to downtown], because as long as we was [marching] single, trying to get [to downtown], as fast as we get to the water hose, they cut us off.But in that day, I refused to go to jail because my job was more important out of jail, I felt. Because I had two cars which people didn't want to be done, carrying those wet children home. And I went far as the airport, I went far as Bessemer, I went far as Brighton. I went to all of these places to take those children home after they got wet. And I felt that day was more important than going to jail because a lot of us wouldn't want a wet, wet child, five or six of them in that car wet, one behind another. But service to me has more to do than a car to me.
Huntley:
So you didn't mind the children getting in your car, wetting your seats up. This was a service that was necessary at the time. So whatever's necessary, that's what you did. Your family was intimately involved.
Hendricks:
My whole family was involved. My oldest daughter, I guess she's already been here for an interview, she went to jail. My wife was secretary for the movement. My baby was in line for the jail, but they begged us to bring the oldest one back home after she went. So that saved the baby. So I was going to take her to jail the next time I went, but the whole house was in motion to go. I never felt more better. I didn't know how my wife was going to take it, losing my job and losing all I had, but she is in support to it.
Huntley:
Did you ever lose your job?
Hendricks:
Yes.
Huntley:
You did lose your job at Jim Dandy's?
Hendricks:
Yeah, but I regained it. I feel like if you ever read the story of Job, everything that has been taken from me, or everything I thought was going [inaudible 00:44:48], has been given back to me. So I don't feel like a loser. I feel like there is more of this that all of us should find to do until we balance out. I even feel today that we could regain our community back.
Huntley:
Well, tell me just briefly about the circumstances of you losing your job.
Hendricks:
What you say now?
Huntley:
The circumstances that caused you to lose your job. Why did you lose your job?
Hendricks:
Well, when I got involved with that, I got in the paper and the person who I worked for was white and he was with his white brothers. He said they said that they didn't want to work with me. So he said to me that their job was more important to them than my one job. So he had to let me go because nobody who was white wanted to work with me.So he pursued to take me in the office and we sit there and talk and we conversed like this. And he said to me that, "I got to run this job with these people." And I said to him that, "If you run this job, aren't you supposed to make decisions?" He says, "Yes." I said, "Well, I'm confused." He said, "Why are you confused?" I said, "I'm confused because you make decisions and you're telling me about who works on the job when it's time for you to make a decision. And it's not based on what they think. So I would like for you to make a decision."
Huntley:
And he made the decision.
Hendricks:
When he got around to it, I said, "Now, I want you to tell me." He said, "Why was you going and what you doing on the bus? Where were you going and what you doing on the bus?" I said to him, "I rode the bus, I was trying to go to Ensley and I ended up in jail."He said to me, "Then what you done on the bus?" I said, "Well, I was going to Ensley. I ended up in jail." He said, "Well, I don't feel that you should have rode the bus unless you rode it where you were supposed to have rode it at." I said, "I rode it where I was supposed to. I paid my fare and I just got on there. I was comfortable and sat down, but I'm confused." I said, "Now you feel that I should be fired and you got people who's on this job who have stole from the company, you didn't fire them."
I say, "You got people on this job who have killed and been convicted for murder. You didn't fire them." I said, "Why is it that you fired me for riding a bus and you can't fire the people who stole from the company and who have killed people?" So he said to me then said, "You was off sick, wasn't you?" I said, "Yes." And you rode the bus? I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, you go back to the doctor and come back to work tomorrow." So he haven't answered me yet. I'm still waiting on the answer.
Huntley:
So he didn't fire you then?
Hendricks:
He did, but when I asked him the question, rather than the answer, it seemed like he gave me my job back.
Huntley:
Okay. So you talked him back into it. Okay, those are very interesting pieces. Is there anything else that you'd like to add that we may not have covered that relates to the movement?
Hendricks:
The only thing I think that in the area of success has been the movement and I think all of us as Blacks should look at the jobs that we have, and try to stay within the area of where we are, not retreat to become so complacent that we feel that this automatically happened. And we should always be mindful of what we are and where we are. And we don't have anything to lose. We only ask for what we own because it rightfully belongs to us, and that's my feeling. That has always been my feeling. We only ask the people to move over and give us... As they call it at night, "What you niggers want now?" I would always answer them by saying, "We want the same thing you all want." Well, I'll be over there. Come on, I ain't always entertain my guests. And this is the way I would put them when they called me at three o'clock in the morning, two o'clock at night. And I feel that the people should feel the same way now. We only is trying to claim what we rightfully own.
Huntley:
So they could not intimidate you.
Hendricks:
We're not trying to claim anything that belongs to anybody else.
Huntley:
They were attempting to intimidate you, but-
Hendricks:
What?
Huntley:
They attempted to intimidate you, to scare you so that you would leave the movement and stop-
Hendricks:
Oh, yeah. I've had two or three cars to come watch me cut grass. So yes, I've had white ladies to call me and try to get me out at two and three o'clock in the morning. I've had all this, all these good things happen. It's just one of those things you have to be aware of.
Huntley:
Sure. Mr. Hendricks, I want to thank you for coming and taking your time out of your busy schedule to talk with us today. And we will definitely be in touch with you in very short order. We'll make copies of this and have you to review them. Thank you for coming.MUSIC:
Sweet in the morning
Oh, Lord
Its sweet in the morning
Copyright © Joe Hendricks and Horace Huntley. 1995
For additional background, see Birmingham Movement 1956-1966 for web links.
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