 Good evening. My name is Lisa Thomas and tonight I am hosting the Martin Luther King Legacy in Davis program. Today we have with us Reverend John Pamperin. He will be saying some words about Reverend Martin Luther King as well as Reverend Timothy Malone and Professor Terry Turner and Dick Holdstock. Thank you all for joining us this evening. They will be providing some insight on their experiences in traveling to lead a march in Alabama. So at this point in time I would like to go to the Martin Luther King. I have a dream speech so we'll listen to that for a few minutes and then I will get on with introducing my guests. Thank you for joining us. Tomorrow leader of our nation. I have the pleasure to present to you Dr. Martin Luther King. Happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. A great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today under the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a red beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity but 100 years later the Negro still is not free. 100 years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. 100 years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. 100 years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land and so we've come here today to dramatize the shameful condition in a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. They were signing a promise or a note with every American was to fall there. This note was a promise to all men. Yes, black men as well as white men would be guaranteed. During this program we would like to highlight the experiences of our guests today what they experienced traveling from Selma to Montgomery during a several day march in 1965 March 16th 1965 but before we interview some of our guests we'd like to now turn to Reverend Timothy Malone to add some of your comments and thoughts about the mood at this time and the significance of Martin Luther King. Well first I'd like to thank you for having us here today. It's a privilege and it's an honor. What stands out in my mind most today is that the things that Dr. Martin Luther King fought for and died for are still very much a part of the struggle that exists today at the beginning of the 21st century. The fact that we had an election that was essentially handed to the current president select George Bush on a platter by the Supreme Court and particularly that it occurred at a time when blacks in the south have not been treated fairly at the voting booths that they were given the the worst equipment the poor areas were given the ballots that were had a higher percentage of malfunctioning something is wrong we have a long way to go in America and I think that the king's message of equality king's message of justice is still strong and relevant as relevant today as it was when he died April 4th 1968 or was assassinated I should say and I think our challenge now is to to make that dream a reality because king was really not an idle dreamer his his impact came because he was making his dreams come true he was a man of action he was a man of integrity he was a man of character he was a man of passion and he was willing to give everything he had his life in order to make his dream come true so amidst all the death threats amidst the murders of civil rights workers the assassination of Malcolm X the assassination of Medgar Evers the murder of Goodwin Swarner and Cheney and Viola Loezo king still persevered he refused to to retreat and go back into academia or to to retire and give up the struggle and so he gave his life so that we could have a better life but the struggle still continues because in every true democracy every person counts and every vote counts and in my opinion that did not happen this last election so we're facing some some challenging days ahead but I believe that in a long run that we will will be a better nation because of the struggles in front of us and because of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King and people like those who are around this table today thank you Reverend Malone thank you Lisa I would now like to talk a little bit about the bus trip in 1965 and on March 16th 1965 a group of individuals from Davis went on a bus ride from Davis to Selma Alabama to march to Montgomery this was to follow Martin Luther King in his dream I would now like to turn to some photos of the citizens of Davis boarding the bus and heading on their journey would someone like to add commentary about the first one and that bus is right in front of the Davis community church and there's a lot of people that were pretty uptight that were getting ready to go on that bus people that were uptight about getting on the bus people are uptight because they couldn't go on the bus you know and that's Dick Holdstock speaking there a lot of us had more hair what were the times like in Davis at that time what was the mood well it was a small town wasn't it was for me it was I never could figure it out I just came here I'd only been here for a year and I was sort of a transplant from back east so it was just a very different sort of place and I thought it was an interesting place to to be going to on a march from and because I thought the sociology of the community wouldn't propel such a thing and so I was always pretty surprised that it happened but I think John and others helped to go so interesting it's about 10,000 people and approximately 4,000 students at that time okay and that's Reverend John Pampern speaking how about the second photo what what's going on there it's the Lily Baptist church in Montgomery Alabama and people are we we had a lovely time with the our hosts there that night and we sang songs together with the Dewey Pruitt who was the minister of the Davis community church lit playing the piano and we all got John shaved his beard off and I cut my hair and everybody kind of gave themselves nice and tram and put on ties and all that sort of thing my goodness okay I'd now like to talk to John Pampern a bit thanks again for joining us John thank you brief history Reverend John Pampern is a street minister and crisis consultant for the City of Davis he is also a member of the Yolo County Citizens for Affirmative Action he is also a campus minister at the Cal Aggie Christian Association John Pampern attended the University of Chicago Divinity School through the Chicago Theological Seminary graduating in 1963 with a degree in Divinity it is my pleasure to introduce the leader and organizer of the Davis Contingency to Selma Alabama Reverend John Pampern first of all what inspired you to organize citizens to go on this trip what was going on at the time and and what gave you the wherewithal to round up all these people to take a bus ride clear across several states well Lisa those of us that graduated from various seminaries in the year 1963 really were trained to understand our commitment to Christianity to be one of social action and social change so excuse me so when we arrived at our our new jobs I was participating in the campus ministry from 63 to 77 actually Lisa at the Cal Aggie Christian Association we were pretty confident the spirit of those Kennedy years that action would create change and we trusted the American dream to some extent that all people could be included so why why you why did you decide to take us personally I was responding because I was a great admirer of Martin Luther King before then in terms of his writings and his actions writing to the call that he had made through the National Council of Churches for ministers and members of churches to join him in this march and so personally when he called I I talked to a number of people and felt that we should go okay how did you motivate people to to take on a mission like this well the ministers I tried to make them feel guilty but really I had the freedom Lisa in terms of my work in in the freedom of of my particular ministry to try to translate how important it would be to the to the local congregations and then probably more significant was that like Dick and Terry had these jobs that they were going to have to leave for a week and that was a probably the most difficult thing in in in trying to stir up interest is what kind of sacrifice kind of that everyday sacrifice where people going would they be willing to make to join the march it was important to have a lot of people from Davis just as it was important to have people from throughout the country in which we were trying to demonstrate that it was time now for this social change and you had a cross-section of America that was supporting the change and then we felt those of us within the church that that King who was not just a pastor of a church but also really brilliant theologian had the depth and grasp of these social issues that we were in good hands in which we would not only contribute to his in insight of change but that he would be able to use us in very constructive ways what kind of like you said sacrifices what kind of prices did people end up paying ultimately when they returned in terms of their job security where their financial well I'm assuming financial costs but were there any other risks that people were willing to take in terms of jeopardizing their employment for example well I think one one minister not local did lose his job actually the congregation and asked him to leave he was not renewed the next year I think also that everybody that I know was put into a position of translating why they went and I always felt that that was maybe the most constructive part of the whole experiences is translating what experience that we had and and then act on that experience in which the legacy continued as as the as this program is to be about but that that happened immediately and sometimes uh with some rejection in those times but at the same time at least I had the feeling that this was a real action which was going to be translated into our personal lives and in our personal commitments for more than just this time I was very confident of that of course I was very young too so I felt that this was what America was supposed to be and everyone felt that it was worthwhile and in the end I'm sure oh yes I think that was there was real bonding of the group on the bus afterwards too fabulous well thank you for your comments I'd now like to look at some additional photos of that trip to Alabama terry turner would you like to tell us what's going on in this photo here does that bring back any memories uh yeah is that the march yes do we prove it and he used to be the uh one of the campus minister and I think he was a minister the president presbyterian church he's a community church and we were uh getting together getting ready to go out on the march at that time we were waiting for a bus to take us up for a bus and we were kind of nervous and we were just sitting around talking and trying to be as uh as at ease as possible under the circumstances so this photo is in alabama now it is a Selma no this is Montgomery Alabama this is Montgomery we never went to so no except to drive through there oh I see and we uh went to Montgomery we got off the bus to Montgomery and we joined the march on the way I went out to we were getting ready to go out and join the march so were you meeting with people all over the states then or or were you meeting with just people that generally talking to anybody you would talk to us and uh congregation from the church different people around the community would come up and and give us a lot of support and I remember myself getting a lot of support from people thinking thanking me for coming down there and do all the white guys were talking about Terry I know okay no that wasn't quite thank you Terry I would now like to introduce and feature Dick Holdstock thank you for joining us dick dick was an organizer for the California conference on families that follow the crops founding secretary and treasurer for the davis human relations council and a founding member of yolo county economic opportunity commission former president of the california environmental health association a Mcgovern delegate to the democratic party convention in 1972 the northern california vice president of the california democratic council the former chair of yolo county democratic central committee the former chair of davis democratic club the founding secretary and treasurer of stake elected to the davis city council in 1972 former president of uman davis sister city program that my mom went on i remember sure did founding member of yolo county citizens for affirmative action and he supported the united farm workers by early participation in delano participated in southern christian leadership conferences poor people's campaign in washington dc it was actively involved in anti-war activities and worked on save several davis city council campaigns for progressive candidates welcome dick oh yes thank you i was wondering if you could tell us what it was like getting prepared for the trip how did everyone come together and and really you know put this into play in terms of working out logistical issues what were the nuts and bolts of putting together you can imagine what an exciting time it was um we watch on television the various demonstrations that took place in the south the um what happened in birmingham alabama with the dogs under people and the people being turned back at the bridge in selma alabama and we had a very articulate minister at the church that i belonged to at that time which was the dewy prude at the davis community church and his sermon is just really every time he spoke i was i was ready to go whatever happened i was a deacon in that church at the time and they brought to the deacons meeting the telegram that came from the southern christian leadership conference asking for people to join them and i said right where do i go how do i do it you know and i pretty well decided i wanted to go but i knew john because john had uh he gave the his one and only as i understand it sermon at the davis community church and there was one person in the congregation thought it was great and we were friends ever since and terry and i got to be buddies because we worked together with the university so um there was an exciting time and i was told that there was going to be a meeting to discuss going at the calaggy christian association so i went there phil walker who was the who was the uh minister pastor of the methodist church in davis was there and he was ready to go from the beginning and john was there and uh several other people but we sort of had trouble saying well if we were to go what would we do and stuff like this you know so finally someone said let's talk about if let's just decide we're gonna go and then they will take it from there and john pretty well led it from that point on the radio made a terrific difference and i want to say that you know that as one person that i was employed i had young children at home when i came home and told my wife jackie at the time she said well she said uh i think you should go and she took on the job of organizing getting the bus and doing a lot of that original work there hadn't been for so many people behind the scenes making things happen it would never have happened people would never have gotten out of davis one of my best friends showed up with his money in his hand and one of the i want to go he says but i'm going to tell you one thing i'm not going to sign the non violence certificate you're supposed to have i said well i'm sorry you can't go but we took his seventy five dollars and left him behind he's never forgiven me for that he every time he sees me he talks about it can you talk about the non-violent certificate can you explain what that was about yeah maybe john you you were more involved and you weren't making us sign these damn things i don't know what it said but i just went ahead and signed it anyway well one of the principles of southern christian leadership conference was that of non-violence and in any big march like that or which involves a lot of social change a number of groups come with different tactics and what was very important and significant to southern christian leadership conference was that we signed these commitments to non-violence partially because of their belief that this was the most significant way to make change partially probably for our protection because a number of us certainly didn't realize how difficult it was going to be once we got down there that the many of us out of our experience just had not any experiences to go on that were that stressful or i was just trying to try to be a little bit funny there but it's it wasn't funny at all because we were very very serious about the non-violent commitment yes it it was very important to all of us that we follow through with the gandhi and philosophy that's right behind the whole movement and so it was it was important and very valid to because there's a lot of social upheaval at the time a lot of violent activities going on potential was the potential is there yeah well the promise was there that we could possibly do something but i sometimes you know when i think about it i reflect back and think how little we did because the point was we were asked to come down there and we came in on one night uh like on i think it was like a thursday night into migamory alabama and we stayed in this lovely little church and they were bused out the next morning to join the marches as they came in from selma alabama and then when we got into town that night it poured rain and there was a concert it was in an open field with one light bulb hanging over the stage and we saw john baez peter seager the um bernstein yeah that bernstein was there yeah who was the great black author that was there i mean we could list a number of people but it was the one of the most beautiful concert that i ever heard and we were just up to our knees in mud and just being rained on the whole time but it felt wonderful warmth yeah you didn't care you didn't care yeah we're with people that had that good will that was coming from all over the country and the kind of the way that the people in the church this little black baptist church in migamory received us was so beautiful i mean i tell you that talk about southern hospitality and that hard pew we slept on was so warm it was but it was it was a beautiful was tony vinnett there too i believe he was yes i gosh i mean that was that night and you didn't want to leave you just stood there pouring right completely surprising we didn't get sick but it was so such a lovely thing you know oh that's good to hear i'd like to now turn to another photo and maybe we can reminisce a little bit about that this looks like more marching oh that was that was wet time and we were that's us in this little crowd over here in the corner waiting for the people come that is the one coming from selma and they went past it took hours almost to get past it we got on the end of the line the guys that provided the suites the little sewers little toilets along the way for that was the seminary from san enselmo they they closed the seminary down and the entire seminary came out to that march and they drove trucks along and set up toilets along the road and provided water they did the dirty work for the whole march would impress me we're all the people who come out of their houses and they waved their hankies and they go you know i think i'm gonna just join you and they walk with us and women in canes and they could hardly walk but they come and join us and and walk with us and and they would thank us for coming and that really helped because you had all these hostile eyes and stuff around as on the side as well so we had a lot of warm beautiful hugs and kind of support for the black community so we got as much violent visual contact with whites as we did black people who was nice so it was really really interesting contrast all the time and it was raining we were well protected by the national guard they were flying helicopters over all the time they had they had an army all along the side of the road they had all kinds of jeeps with full of soldiers that were there to make sure nothing happened you know it was pretty amazing and that march is only about four people wide and it was had to be two or three miles long maybe a longer oh yeah you was really i mean i just stood there crying as i saw those good people that had really put the work into other than what you know it was lovely for us to come there and be able to join them but they did all the work i mean that was amazing they took the risk everyone took the risk it sounds like but we didn't take much risk compared to them yeah you know there were there's so many vignettes that you remember but the the two i like to talk about is when i'm getting off the bus oh yeah i i have i was trying to direct things and i walked off the bus a glorious leader i had no clue and there were so many people and so much chaos going on that i thought well i guess we i guess i've lost it now and a afro-american that shined shoes said do you want your shoe signed sir and i said now right now he said well i'll shine him free and so he shined my shoes and while i was shining them without ever looking up gave me the phone number that we were to call that was one experience of safety you know the other was that after the events were over and king had spoken i went to get some flowers for the people of the church because they had cooked for us and and been such great hosts and every once in a while even though by then the sense of of conflict was there i was in such a hurry that i took a cab to a florist in the white section of town and while i was there with my twenty dollar bill that we had collected to buy these flowers i noticed at the back of the floor shop that there was no sound coming and all of a sudden this fear hit me that i was essentially in the wrong floor shop and so i took the flowers put the twenty dollars and walked out and then i was again confronted with what am i going to do now i've got no idea where i am and a afro-american cab driver came up and he said get in you just did the stupidest thing i've ever seen so he was watching out there was a sense of people watching out for you you know which you know that happens in life that people do watch out for each other and so well i'd now like to turn to terry turner terry was a founding member of the racial justice action group at the davis unitarian church and was also a founding member of the davis human relations council he has participated in many human rights awareness sessions for the church as chair and founding member of the olo county citizens for affirmative action he influenced its rapid expansion and put extended effort into bringing together davis organizations such as now the rainbow coalition and the cross-cultural center at uc davis and others to work for civil rights with a focus on voter registration as founding member and chair of friends of the rutileo grande the davis sister city project with rutileo grande el salvador terry has contributed to assistance projects including getting electricity to the community buying computers for the community at large and building a civic center and providing scholarships thank you for joining us terry what propelled you to go on this bus trip well i wrote some notes here and i thought well what did i guess i could say four generations of jim crow that i grew up in and since then i didn't grow up in california and i did and i grew up in a segregated world and and me and my family did back through my grandmother like you know my grandmother was born a slave and so they always kept me in touch with that to be proud and to know that my family was very socially conscious of these things they always thought about what they would like to be musicians poets great intellectuals artists artists which i've become and a teacher and i'm a professor also at uber college i'd like to say and um they they supported me in doing all these things but this was all my family's things that they wanted to do for themselves and they told me that i was given the blessing to be born in this chaos and to do that so i had a lot of support from them in order to do things like go on that march in fact they uh my mother had suggested i did strongly to do so as she was a person who had a strong spirit and a strong voice and she had also told john about the serious difficulties we may run into going down there i had already known about serious difficulties i grew up in susanata and there were serious difficulties growing up from day to day so i had no problem with that in fact when i was down south there in summer the black community asked me to help get these white people into that church so i did and then they asked me you said now you stay in there we don't need for you to come out here we'll take care of this and i said okay but if you need me i'll come out to say we know that you go eat and go talk to them so these nice sisters and stuff they took care of us and kept us warm and nice and and asked me he said anytime i was ever about to come back please come back and they were so happy to have me and they thought it was very important that black people was able to stand up and and fight for what was needed well my whole family always stood up and fought what was needed and told me to always speak and pray and never have never let other people do your work and do your job for you so that was one reason i went because at first i was concerned about this nonviolent activity i mean i grew up in Cincinnati i was a ghetto kid uh young man in fact i i knew a lot about street so when i came here you asked me about davis well davis to me was just a very odd place so i was grew up in big urban ghetto of Cincinnati which later i found i was a ghetto it was a black community which i visited recently i went back to sea and it hasn't changed so i was thinking you know those same people still sitting there waiting for that bus and i used to wait on that bus with them to go downtown so we were poor and my family was considered maybe middle class for black but that's poor so for everybody else we lived in in Cincinnati we lived in one big house a whole family and my aunt would catch the pigeons on the ceiling to eat pigeons so we'd have pigeon under glass and stuff you know so stuff like that so that's how we lived you know and my you know my aunt and all them you know they worked for white people's maids and my mother was a nurse and my father worked for dr schmitt who came out here with the primate center so uh i was propelled by all of that to not work at the primate center and because i didn't want to catch monkeys and get scarred up like my brothers did and those diseases they caught too from doing that so i didn't i was taught not to do that by them and my stepfather and my mother so i started working here in the community in it at the university and uh it was a serious thing for me to go down there i i was not making a lot of money i was just a lab assistant and i didn't have a position as john or dick did and i was a still poor and i would like to be artist but i didn't have any money and uh so um i just i went and i think maybe i took that seventy five dollar was a dick's good friend and i went and i found a little bit of other money to go so i went and i got my only suit that i had i had a whole lot when i came from Cincinnati but i didn't have many left it was a year later and so um i got a suit and tie which i didn't i sell them a war and went in that march i remember the water sloshing in my shoes and and i remember the people they were just like Cincinnati except it was in the south so i wasn't too concerned it was south it's not far from Cincinnati just over the river into Kentucky so i was used to that and i'm used to segregation and i was used to prejudice i didn't like it never did and still don't and i really believe in civil rights and so forth and that's also one of the reasons propelled me to do some of the work with El Salvador and others i've been in Nicaragua also i remember going to Nicaragua and my friends was down there with me said what do you think of Nicaragua I go man this is one huge ghetto this is really great like them they dance good we have a good time like this stuff we can go and dance and have a little cerveza and have some fun and k-pasta and all that stuff you know so that was my life and i grew through that it took me through that to get a degree several degrees and so i in a sense like i followed the issues of what my family wanted me to do my mother died of cancer she lived here for a while went back to Ohio and told me i had to stay and not go back because she said you know you're only going to end up in jail because you're going to get mad and you're not going to do it right so you got to stay here go to school i mean she was right a lot of my friends did that's where they went and so and they became you know postmen or whatever they could and i still have friends there and i was lucky in a sense i came here and my mother was so strong she put a lot of emphasis on that and for me to go fight for freedom and these issues of which i still do i had an uncle in 1914 was lynched in Ohio yeah he got mad at a policeman you know we don't like to be told stuff he was mad at you know because he had an argument with a woman and a policeman came and told him you know called him a boy and said you know you can't be doing this and so the policeman pulled out a gun at him and so he shot the policeman and then he told the policeman he said okay i'm wrong sir i'm wrong i'm guilty and so they took him to jail and this is why i'm so strong and adamant about civil rights and social issues and and why people get mad at me a lot but i really believe once we are guilty time to lay off because they drug him out of the jail right and took him down the street and put him on a pole and shot him 50 times cussed him lynched him and then they went out on the levy and shot up and burned down houses to every black person they could see now the man has said he was guilty he said i was wrong take me to court and let's do this and so i believe in the law and not people taking personal actions on people so i really believe in our following the laws and using fighting for civil rights and fighting for civil rights through law and not through personal vendettas or personal feelings and i hate it and that really bothers me that gets me really fired up which is part of the reason i went to summer and do these things and my as well as i said my great-grandmother was born in slavery she told me they took me to sythianna kentucky i know all those places we went my mother told me about riding in the cable in the cattle cars and i remember riding in the train recently i went over to with charles holmes and his daughter to sacramento there was a train exhibit over there about the pullman that pullman's union a phil ran off so and i was thinking you know the train they had that union it was one of the first unions for black workers but it was the last union for the for the trains because the trains at that time was probably the most segregated of all institutions in united states because we all had to sit in separate cars and there was a dining car there had really nice linen and nice stuff and i was thinking i couldn't have ever ate at this table i could work at the kitchen and i could have been a pullman but i was too young but that's what my family would have been and so i had to tell charles holmes his daughter this so we're teaching her this and i'm teaching my kids this and they're going well and my daughter says that's like an old movie dad what is that you know so uh but it's but it's really important for people to understand because i believe that our anger and hatred still is there and um as my good friend the river here pointed out and i think we do have to keep working in these issues absolutely and i agree with you too i've heard some of those stories from my relatives it's like you know it used to be that black people couldn't go there and it's somewhere a public place where everyone goes so it's hard for you to understand one of the people that was on that bus was a baptist minister black baptist minister from sacramento and we got into i think it was nashville we got wasn't in nashville did we stop in nashville we stopped in nashville i think it was nashville we stopped there we had a two-hour layover before the next bus took off and he hit the he was very sick this minister so charlie and i went with him and we went to the hospital right across the road from the bus station they said they couldn't take care of him there he had to go to the other color hospital down the road so we ran down the street i think maybe he got a taxi went down there and that you know it was this great long line of people standing there waiting a full-on group of people waiting to be taken care of and uh i think we finally did get him in and we just barely made it back by the skin of our teeth to uh to that to catch the bus on that note i'd like to look at some more photos i i have something that might be relevant to what we're discussing right now terry why don't you get us started can you tell us about this photo oh yeah i remember that very well we were marching into summer headed right for the capital capitalist to the mcgummery i'm sorry i keep blowing this mcgummery so we were we're seeing the capital building from there was like walking out of capital mall looking at the california capital you could see it and uh we were going by there and i was sort of being on guard a little bit because i could see these guys over there these guys were having they had large clubs and they were spitting on this man with his glasses on he was a minister here in davis this is the minister of the community church and he kept walking out there on the edge and we kept saying do you can't do this we can't you got to come in the middle he goes but i'm going to do this and i got my price so he would walk from his collar these guys were getting madder and madder he had his collar on and he's walking out there his collar so very proud me and and a couple other african-americans we went out and so we just went and got between him and those guys and pushed him in so i remember that and i said we're all going to get killed here i knew it was going to happen i said i knew it was going to happen by coming here but here it goes but i can't at least we're going to do is try to protect this man at this point so myself and malcom and there was some other african-americans there and and we all kind of got it and moved him inside but i remember that was very frightening moment yeah i now like to turn to what resulted in from all of these um protests and everything that you all participated in or sharing your stories with us this evening upon the arrival the return of the bus riders to this trip to alabama what there was created the davis human relations council i'd like to tell you a little bit about that the davis human relations council was incorporated april 29th 1966 the articles of incorporation state that its specific and primary purposes are the following a to organize the resources of the whole community and bring to pass in practical manner both in this area and in the nation equality of opportunity regardless of race color creed ancestry including but not limited to housing employment voting rights and education b to provide good offices and for mediation and specific local of specific local issues involving equality of opportunity and c to offer mediation services to governmental entities both local and non-local and some of the results of the actions taken by the bus riders were the of course the forming of the davis human relations council which i understand is now the davis human relations commission totally totally different okay in an event um the actions included the following the results of the actions included the following um establishing the diogenes house and helped obtain funding from county grants totaling some 30 000 for the first year assigned lease for property applied for grants and established diogenes as a non-profit corporation established migrant child care under pilot program funding over 30 000 in one year and i'm just going to skip through some of these supported the children's center uh supported the davis free clinic and supported alternatives in birth control supported project tutor supported the NAACP and supported hunger hike and big brothers of this the big brothers association of davis and supported the united farm workers union and again i'd like to thank you all for for your involvement and and some of us today get to reap the benefits of all of your hard work and and the efforts that you've made for towards civil rights um i'd now like to turn to you timothy and see um what you would like to add to all of this discussion i interviewed our bus riders but but in light of our discussion what do you have to say some conclusionary observation remarks well i'd just like to say that we are are standing on the um the shoulders of giants that that many people will pay the price for us to be able to for me even for an example just to live in davis i mean 30 years ago i couldn't live here it was hard for an african-american even to live in the city of davis um and if you look at uc davis over half of the student body is children of color people of color um and um that's unheard of so things are changing but we have a long way to go we have a lot of work still left to be done we've never had an african-american president we've never had a latino or latino president we never had a female president we've never had a a an asian president we never had a muslim president we never had a jewish president i mean we still have a long way to go before our native american president whose land this is we we all stand on you know so so so we still have a we still have a long way to go so i think that um it also shows you that people in power do not give it up willingly power something that resists change and we have to struggle in order to make the change that happened and sacrifice and as dr king did even sometimes we have to be willing to even risk our lives but freedom and the price of freedom is is very important and i think the price of freedom is worth paying any price so that our children and our grandchildren can enjoy even more freedom than we now enjoy and i think one day we'll get there we we shall overcome as dr martin the king would sing and all of the marchers many years ago and still a favorite song right now someday we shall overcome we will be free thank you timothy thank you um i have a question for all of you that i'd like to run around the table um you gave us some stories about what it was like going there and and how it all got started and in some of the experiences you had interacting with the you know racial conflict issues therein um can you tell me um how did this experience change your life why don't we start with you reverend pamperon well i i think the most significant thing was the experience itself actually being there uh it was preceded by studying at seminary admiring martin luther king reading his writings but what the experience itself did was kind of experientially say gee these things are really possible uh you know this is really worthwhile to be influenced by this uh this would be fun to commit your my life to um uh this is much more worthwhile than other avenues of opportunity that were were given to me and i uh really feel that it provided a uh a beginning of of what i feel is a very meaningful life and uh that the the excitement of seeing uh people of various backgrounds and color uh break through and uh share that culture that that hymn sing was a big deal for me because i didn't like those hymns very well until i heard that church sing it but now it means uh uh there is a chance always to meet the change there is always the faith that you can meet that change uh and and and perhaps provide some justice and some fairness and some opportunity and uh in the in the process of the change as as difficult as it is it is very exciting to see that you make a next step and the benefits of cultures sharing uh their history is is again uh in the most profound sense uh the american dream how about you dick how did how did this experience change your life well in so many ways i i felt so strongly uh when i was there that that i was not doing enough i i just did what i was told to do go out there and watch back in and just do the little things that we could do because we didn't want to be in the way of those who were really doing the job but nevertheless it was wonderful to be there and just give our own testimony for the fact that we were with them and that's really what they wanted but then on the way back we talked you know isn't there something here we must we're a bunch of hypocrites we're going down there telling these guys how they should change their lives and what they should do and yet we've got so much stuff going on here locally in fact every single house in davis had a restrictive covenant on it in those days that specifically said this house could not be sold to a person of color or to a jew that's what the house that i owned had that on it i didn't know it till i looked in the fine print and there it was and so the first thing we did was to get busy and go around telling everybody the byron fair rumford act a byron rumford fair housing act prohibits that you weren't black or jewish yeah but i mean it was easy for me because i could step back and go back to being the respectable big old stuck with his tie and all that sort of thing you know but i'm glad that i stuck my neck out and will continue to do so until we see a little bit more parity in this society so how about you terry how did this experience change your life well i think it's given me a lifelong sense that well let me go back i had to mature and and and it became a lifelong process of translation of all of this work and i it probably propelled me through school and my education and the realization that i always have to do this and to never go backwards to try to continually to go forward and to try to help the youth try to help others it gave me a place and a place that was seemingly always temporary but in the long run it hasn't been i thought it was temporary and transitory but it's given me a lot more concrete place to be and i can never be doing the work that i've done or been able to do because of this i can never be the victim and never accept it and i never accept the victimization of it or even being that so i become a person that's six foot tall and i'm but i feel like i'm seven foot all the time and i don't ever feel like i have to stutter stammer slur shuffle whatever i like to walk tall high and jump and i feel like there's nothing that i can't do and so i like to be able to um project that to other people particularly young people to feel like uh never say no don't tell me you can't only we will and you can if you want to it's your choice so i like to i've told that to my son i probably said that to you sometime probably and i said it to my daughter and uh brother and all these other people because it's really important to me like we have to go forward and we can't feel um we can we can change it only if we don't feel badly about our who we are i think we've been really lucky in a sense because we are here as teachers we're going to teach all of this nation how to be free and that's what i think about black people have had that unique opportunity and i'm one of those people i've had a unique opportunity to teach the entire population of the united states how to be free and now carry that down to mexico and central america and the caragua and we're going to do it every place so i really think it's really good and and we're not and we're not finished so it's and so you can do it through dance and music and art and there's this wonderful show on uh pbs about jazz which is talking about that which that was all about my family were jazz musicians and so forth and that so it reminisces a lot of things for me and so um we can teach we can be and we are and uh my grandfather worked at the hotel which we wasn't allowed to go to now i've taken a picture of him and those guys sitting there with those white jackets and they'd all have pretty sorrowful faces on pretty but i put it on a painting so therefore people can see it so it'll be there for eternity for people to see what it was like for my grandfather to work in that hotel taking care of whites taking care of their fur coats and making sure their doors opened and everything was clean and nice and all their nice lemon was there and he couldn't have any of his family in there so anyway uh i think he i really honor him he's he is a person his name was pete and uh he's a person that i really honor and respect as well as my great grandmother and all these people so i respect them all and they're all of my heroes and i'd like to pass that on to all of you so that's what we're doing we have a whole legacy of wonderful heroes that survived and we survived slavery and i don't care what anybody said it's never going to be that way again it can't be colonization is over so this is post-colonial period we're going to keep going i don't care what they want to take us back it will never happen they can forget it it's done so it may be and you know today is post-industrial and all those good things i'm glad we need to continue to go forward you know this popular culture is not too bad so i think we all should start playing a saxophone okay well thank you very much okay well obviously we're having this program today the legacy of martin Luther king in davis to commemorate the martin Luther king holiday which is monday january 15th 2001 i'd also like to invite everyone to the martin luther king program which will be held at 12 noon in the davis central park that's on sea street i believe it's third and c is that third and c third and c so i'd like to invite all local community members and people from out of town to come to the davis area to join us in our freedom march and martin luther king program and sunday at the davis community church two o'clock we're out of time but but sunday davis community church two o'clock two o'clock two to five there's another program tomorrow okay everyone thank you very much for joining us and uh have a nice evening and happy martin luther king holiday thank you ladies thank you