 I want to welcome you all to the Cortez Branch Library. You have to remember which library I'm at. My name is Joel Banglin. I'm the branch services coordinator for the San Antonio Public Library, and I want to welcome you to the Cortez Branch Library. This event today is part of our African-American Heritage Month celebration, and we're presenting by means of a video series, a series called Created Equal, which is a series of documentaries that dealt with or recorded the civil rights movements and several different pivotal points in history in the United States history concerning the equality and civil rights in the United States. This program is made possible by our foundation, the San Antonio Public Library Foundation, and they generously secured a grant for us to provide this and also provide the refreshments and the other events that occurred in February. I want to welcome you all again and make sure that if you want to know more about the subject today, please stop by Public Library and make sure to get your library card. How many of you have your card already? If you're new to the library, thank you very much. If you're new to the library, make sure to get a library card. That's the best way to experience all the things that the library has to offer, not just our programs but also our DVDs, our books, magazines, databases, and all the other things that the Public Library shares and builds up on our knowledge. I hope you guys enjoy the snacks and the refreshments that we have today. After the video, we'll only show about 10 to 15 minutes of it. If you'd like to borrow it, you're welcome to do so with your library card. It's a long documentary and far more longer than the time that we allotted for today. So we're only going to show a few minutes of it. The meat of this program, or the main point of this program, is to hear from the first-hand experiences of people who are involved in the freedom rides across the United States. This particular video is called Freedom Riders, and we are fortunate enough to have a participant in that demonstration actually live here in San Antonio, and she'll be speaking today, and a person whose brother was a writer also, and she's going to tell us about her family's experience with his being incarcerated just for riding a bus. Now you might think, why is it so important that we talk about people riding on a bus? This is also different from the event of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This was a demonstration across the South that challenged the laws of travel and interstate travel. So it was illegal for African American people to get on a bus and go to the state of Florida if they were coming from Texas, for instance. They had to ride a separate bus, and sometimes there weren't even those buses in existence, or those routes in existence. So you can imagine, we have the convenience of being able to travel wherever we want to today, but imagine if you had to be restricted to whatever state you lived in, because there were no buses that you could ride to get on to another state. I hope this helps you think and helps you understand that experience, and please share what you think about our program through our event survey at the end of the program. So I'll go ahead and start some of the video. Again, we're going to show only 15 minutes of it. Enjoy the snacks. You're welcome to keep on getting more snacks while the video is going, and then we'll have our speakers come up to the front. I'll pause it right there so that we have enough time for our speakers to speak and have our panel discussion. This movie is available in the San Antonio Public Library, and you can borrow it with your library card. It is about a two-and-a-half-hour documentary, and we have several copies available for a checkout. I'd like to introduce our moderator for today, Dr. Luana Gray. Would you come on up? She is a historian, did I say her name right? Luana Gray, a historian who specializes in the study of African American women's lives and labors. She is an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the History Department and the Honors College of UTSA. There, in addition to U.S. history courses, she teaches seminars on the construction of race and gender and coordinates the American Studies program. In her first book, We Just Keep Running the Line, Black Women and the South Arkansas Poultry Industry, is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2014 by the LSU Press. I'd like to call up one of our speakers, Patricia Dilworth, is a veteran of the Freedom Riders campaign to integrate public transportation through the South in 1961. She was not even 20 when she left her home in Tucson, Arizona to participate in the historic fight for justice. Only after she had hit the road did she tell her mother and her intention to join the Freedom Rides. Her role in the Freedom Rides of 1961 earned her a 39-day sentence in Parchman Penitentiary. After her release, she participated in an impromptu sit-in when denied service at a segregated eatery. She is a graduate of the licensed vocational nurse program at San Diego Mesa College in San Diego, California. And she went on to earn the Associate of Arts degree at Lassen College in Hurlong, California. Shortly after, she joined the military. Dilworth is a veteran of Operation Dead or Storm, and she retired from the U.S. Army after a career that spanned nearly 25 years. She was awarded the highest peace time commendation, the Legion of Merit, and she resides in San Antonio. Barbara Collins Bowie, Ms. Bowie, is the Executive Director of the JR Bowie III Scholarship Foundation. She was born in Jackson, Mississippi, a city universally regarded as a hotbed of the battle of racial equality. Ms. Bowie was a teen in 1963 when civil rights leader Edgar Evers was assassinated, not far from where she lived. Two years prior, she was stunned when her older brother, Jesse James Davis, was pulled off a bus, beaten by a mob, and sent to the notorious parchment penitentiary for his participation in the Freedom Rides of 1961. She followed in his footsteps, participating in demonstrations across Jackson. For most of her life, she has been committed to helping others first as a licensed vocational nurse and later as a social worker. She is a graduate of Our Lady of the Lake University, and her passion has been advocating for mentally handicapped individuals. She has operated and has a share in establishing assisted living and adult daycare facilities in Alamo City. Thank you and welcome to the Cortez Branch Library, and we anticipate your story. Ms. Dillworth, I understand we had a clip of your brother that we would like to share before you speak. Is it a cute appeal? We're going to show this just real quick. This was an interview from the Express? Yes. At this height, the black water fountain was down lower, so it was telling you to go position. I was angry about that type of situation. Jim Crow was eating at me. That second class citizenship thing just didn't work for me, and I would get into a lot of trouble because of that. When I graduated from high school, I heard about the Freedom Rides. I remember thinking that they would arrive in Jackson because they were scheduled to go from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans. So I thought they would just pass through Jackson, and I said, oh my God, this is something that I want to participate in. And this is a vehicle perhaps to get to me to where I want to go in terms of changing the GMCode status policies. I went to a mass meeting, and I heard two co-workers speak about Freedom Rides. And they said, well, you know, this is a way to change the policies in Mississippi. And I said, well, I'm in, you know, so I agreed to go down and try to integrate the white bus station and triumphant bus station in Jackson, Mississippi. When I walked into that station, there was no fear. There was a lot of anticipation because I didn't know what was going to happen, but I didn't have any fear because I felt this was my opportunity to strike back at GMCode. So I felt pretty good about that, and I knew beforehand that I was going to have to spend 39 days in prison. Once I was arrested, it felt liberating. Like, the chains had fell off of my back and my feet. I felt like a first-class citizen for once in my life. So we were there for, what, 39 days, and there were all kinds of incidents. You know, we would sing, you know, Keep Our Spirits Up. We would sing Freedom Songs. They would get angry sometime. The second command was a guy named, a short white guy named Sergeant Sturdy. And Sergeant Sturdy would come down quite often and say, You got damn nigga freedom right of stop there singing. There ain't no freedom here. One night we were singing. And Sergeant Sturdy, each day he was getting angrier and angrier and angrier, and this was building up. This night it exploded. He stopped opening up the cell blocks and bringing them down. Niggas and those white agitators out of here. And they put us in something called a box. It's solitary confinement. It was adequate enough to house maybe two inmates. They put approximately 12 of us in here. Just shelled us in there. And they cut off the ventilation. For the first time, I didn't feel that I was going to lose my life because I couldn't breathe and air that I was breathing in was so hot. So Sergeant Sturdy came down. We say, hey, someone has passed out. We are dying in here. Sergeant Sturdy came down and said, Niggas, I let you out, but you're going to have to say yes sir. And he said, all together on a count of three. One, two, three. You know what we said? Yes sir. What I think most people overlook is that I lived in Jackson at that time. And the Jackson Freedom Riders, the other Freedom Riders came from other states. So when they left prison, they got on airplanes or buses in left town. Jackson Freedom Riders had to stay here. When I walked around my neighborhood, there was two cops known to be brutal to black folks. They would drive up and if I was around, they would slowly walk, slow the car down, keep pace with my skeptics. And they would say, Jesse, James, there was the Freedom Riders. Man, what is this freedom shit about? I never answered them and they never went in further than that. They never tried to physically attack me, but they would let me know. We know where you live and we keep an eye out on you. Anything can happen any day. They never verbally express those things, but that's what was implied. Please welcome our guests again. I'll begin by asking a few questions of you and then we'll open it up to the audience. And I want to say again how much of an honor it is for me to be here. This is something that I get to teach about. It's very central to my teaching the Civil Rights Movement and to actually be with people and to talk to people and hear your experiences for people who've been through it and been so important in it. It's an immeasurable honor and so I'm so glad for your sacrifices and so appreciative because, of course, had it not been for the work of people like you, I would not be where I am. So I know that, especially as a rural Southerner myself. So, Ms. Dilworth, I wanted to ask you first. I was listening to your story. I actually have like a two-prong question. And we saw a lot in the video that people who come from other places, so-called other places, are often accused of being outside agitators. And that was always Southerner's excuse that our Negroes here are happy. It's just these outside agitators come in and get them all riled up and they cause the problems or whatever. And you were coming from Arizona. So I wanted to ask you first what you thought about or how you kind of challenged this idea that you were an outside agitator, like why it was so important to you. And I also wanted to ask you about what made you go, like especially as such a, you know, from reading your story, such a young woman, not even 20, I'm someone who mothers teenagers and teaches teenagers and people that age every day. And there's such a sense of apathy. I can't imagine anything motivating them like that. So what made you go and how did you deal with, you know, this idea that you are an outside agitator? How did you challenge that kind of idea? Well, the reason I went was where I lived in Tucson, Arizona, we were in the minority. But when I was being brought up, we had no signs or nothing like that. And I saw that bus, do you remember the bus that was burning? And that started me thinking, why? Why do they hate people so much just because they happen to be brown? That's the first thing that I couldn't understand. I had just turned 18 because I was in June and I was arrested July 7th. I didn't consider myself an outside agitator. I went because I could not understand, and to this day I still understand it, why the color of somebody's skin made such a difference in how you're treated didn't make any sense to me. So I went without my parents' permission. And I called eventually, you know, to let them know I was okay because I'd been gone a few days. And she said, well, where are you? I said, well, I'm in New Orleans. Why are you in New Orleans? I said, well, Mom, remember that bus? What bus? And I told her about the Great Home Bus. I said, well, I had to go because it didn't make sense to me. And I had to see for myself why and why would they hate me? And I don't even live there, you know? I don't have problems like that. So as far as being an outside, I didn't feel that. I didn't think I was an outsider. I just felt I was going down for a selfish reason initially. And while you were there, did your reasoning change? Like a lot of them seem like they started out very naive like thinking we're not going to need this training. It can't get that bad. I think maybe a lot of people go especially because they're young. You think that nothing can happen to you. Right. But once you, I mean, you see this bus being fire bombed and you're getting beaten or whatever. Does that change how you feel or your purpose for being there? No, I don't think. Well, yes, it did change. I mean, I knew after the bus and after I had gotten there they looked at you like they could just come and just kill you just like that. And these people don't even know me. Then I got scared. I got really nervous when they took us to Parshman prison because the cells are small. I'm not quite sure how small it was, but I knew it was only for two people. And there were four of us in there with two bunks. So, you know, he had two of us sleeping in the same bed. Not, you know, I slept with somebody's foot and so forth. So then I began to get nervous and towards the end I got sick and they thought I had appendicitis and there was no way. They were going to operate on me down there. There was no way. So, I got out and it ended up being gasping in the light so it wasn't a big deal. But there was no way they were going to do that to me down there. Thank you. Ms. Boy, so whereas Ms. Dilworth was coming from Arizona you were a native of Mississippi. And then I think that creates a different experience because even for someone like me, we see in the film that, you know, Birmingham, they describe Birmingham in the film as like the seat or center of like this racial violence, like, you know, the climax sort of racial violence. And we know that Birmingham also had a nickname bombing him because black people's houses and businesses and stuff got bombed so much. So Birmingham and Alabama is pretty dangerous. I'm from rural Louisiana where things are pretty dangerous but there's this story around Mississippi that Mississippi is like the most southern of all of them. That, you know, it's, if any place exemplifies where it's maybe the worst, even though it's bad everywhere, it's like Mississippi, like even when I was growing up my parents would tell me from rural Louisiana, don't get caught in Mississippi at night, you know. So I guess in a sense I have that same kind of question. Given that you come up in that context where there's so much pressure and so much oppression and I think because Mississippi has such a large black population, not the majority but a large black population, the white people there feel like they have to like really be, you know, forceful because something could happen because of the sheer numbers, how do you make the decision in that kind of atmosphere in this place where it's storied to be the most oppressive place of all, how do you make the choice that, you know, you're going to become an activist, that you're going to fight this Jim Crow system and try to make things better. Because I'm thinking it has to be a lot of fear and, you know, warnings and threats like when your brother was saying like the cops and knowing things that could happen to you, so. It was not a choice. Okay. This was our way of life and I remember Ross Barnett, our governor, said at one time, our Mississippi niggers are content and I want to say to you that for a time we were because there was nothing we could do except just accept what was going on and some of the things that you saw was going on and we lived it. So when this movement started and I know that my brother was really happy because he was going against it, you know, all of our lives and he was an activist even before this started and so when this movement started we all became a part of it because this was what we needed to do to make things better for ourselves and so even though he was older and he was traveling with the freedom riders and going places I was still having problems there because we would walk out of school and we would go, you know, when they would do things at the courthouse students would walk out and go down to the courthouse and do sit-ins. I remember several incidents that we got involved in because we were protesting as well and I want to say, you know, there was like restaurants where, you know, the color as they called us at that time had this particular side and the whites were over here running out of our neighborhood and on the white side, you know, the tables were white tablecloths and the people were being served by waitresses or whatever. There was a wall and there was a window and this side had a few booths and a jukebox and a counter and I'm saying color, okay, the black kids could come in there and all we could do was order hamburgers and french fries or something like that and we could put money in the jukebox and dance but we would have to go to the window and ring a bell for service and so that type of thing, when this movement started, you know, it was just automatic for us to get involved and I remember some of the, you know, my classmates, we finally went on the white side and, you know, we sat at the counter, went in there and sat at the counter and we were asking for service and, you know, at first they just ignored us. Now we knew it was dangerous, you know, we knew they could do anything to us because none of the officials would do anything when the blacks were being beaten or abused but even as kids, you know, we felt we had to do this so we went in there and we were demanding service well, we weren't demanding it, we were just asking. We couldn't really demand but, you know, they ignored us but we were very young so they knew not to really, you know, hurt us but they, you know, insisted, you know, physically that we leave and go to the other side and so, you know, there were several incidents like that that I could talk about that, you know, where we were involved but it wasn't a choice. This is, this was our lives. I think you're both very humble about your bravery both of you have said you said you had to go you told your mom and you had to go and you're saying it wasn't a choice, you had to do it so I think in saying that really you're really humble about how brave you were or, you know, you're feeling for going because there were a lot of people who didn't feel like they had to or who may have felt like they had to who didn't have the courage or who had, so a lot felt like they had too much to lose or whatever so again, I'm just really honored that you're sharing your stories and just really seeing such bravery in your stories I wanted to ask you about both of you speak kind of a being concerned for a collective good about other people and before the panel we talked about how you're the people that you didn't even really know on the bust who felt, you know invested in you and invested in things being right refused to eat because you couldn't be served just to give a short example of that story and for people to go through things like this to ride on a bus together to sit together and well, ask for service to go to prison together to a place like Parchman which has a horrible history particularly for African Americans, you know back into the 19th century what kinds of things create that bond and it seems like sometimes it's almost instantaneous what makes you feel connected to these people and to have that kind of trust that they're not going to run off and leave you by yourself, you know there had to be a lot of trust and I think to a certain extent a kind of love among activists to be able to do that kind of work so what did you feel made that bond strong or how did it grow? I think for me is that we all had the same gold in mind, we were we had one thing that we all wanted to do whether you were black or you were white we wanted to go down we wanted to test the system and it was I don't know how to put it it was just strong and you could say anything to them you could just trust that one another to make sure that nobody was going to be left behind if one went you were all going to go and it wasn't something that was said it was just something that was understood and I think that we all craved that equality and I think we still do I mean we're still today fighting for equality we've made progress but there's a unity in that and even in the difference in our ages and I'd like to say that that bus was 50% white so there are others in Hispanics who want that equality and I think that that's our human right and I feel that we're willing to do just about anything to have that and I think that you guys would feel that way too because of the fact that things are not equal so my next question and then I'll open it to the audience and we can come back if we have time we didn't see the whole film but the story of the Freedom Rides if you don't know is that even after being beaten and bombed and some people hospitalized and the fact that in reality the plan is to go from the Upper South in D.C. through the Deep South to New Orleans they're never on those buses going to make it to New Orleans but even as people are arrested this is a lighter policy rather than beating them there's negotiations with Robert Kennedy in New Orleans itself but they arrest them and they arrest them in all kinds of places and young people keep coming they won't stop there's no turning back so finally what happens is that the Interstate Commerce Commission has to step in and say okay there's already been these two Supreme Court decisions the one in 1946 the Boyden v. Virginia decision in 1960 so we're going to step in and we're going to give these decisions some teeth that's what's going to stop a lot of the segregation on interstate travel but the young people wouldn't stop and even for you as an activist and I think looking at your life stories like how successful you've been and the work that you've done since then and you're still your focus on equality and achieving or whatever what is that spirit that motivates you like why is there this feeling because a lot of people get discouraged I mean you saw mega evers be killed you saw even in the height of the movement you see people like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King be killed you see in a couple years later you see those little girls in Alabama be killed what motivates that spirit where I'm not going to turn back like why do you keep is the name of the famous film how do you keep your eyes on the prize like how do you do that because I want to be free I want to be able to go any place I want to go regardless of my color and I feel that if you set your standards here you could make it because being in the military for 24 years not only was I facing prejudice because of being black but I also was a black female which made what I had to do in the military things not anything wrong but when I went to in seal courses in the army I always always always was in the top 20% of all three of my classes always because I had to show the men that I'm as good as you are I wore a marksmanship excellent marksmanship on my chest I can shoot a m16 as good as you can I can take it apart clean it as good as you can and you're not going to stand in my way because if you do I'm going to run over you so get out of my way and when I came in because you may not know much about the army but you have E139 and I told them when I was being interviewed for a leadership award out of basic training they asked me what I planned to do in the military and I told them when I got out I was going to be a sergeant major and that's exactly what I did so I knew then I was born places and so that's I just want to be free and I want you to be free I want everybody to be able to do whatever it is that they want to do they need to be able to do it well I became an activist very young and sitting out there is my daughter and my grandson and one of the students from the Bowie Foundation after school program my motivation is that I want my grandson I've always wanted kids of I don't know why they call us a different color or whatever but I want any of our kids to be able to say I want to be president and that possibility is there I have been working with kids most of my life and trying to help them find ways to to get over some of the anger find ways of find ways to use things to use to get them through some of the hardships because our kids the minority kids have a hard time because they don't they can aspire to be all that the white kids can aspire to be so I have worked with them and I want so much for them to be able to aspire to be anything they want to be when I was in from elementary school through high school when I graduated I got my transcript one time and really read it and every year they would ask us what do you want to be well I would always say a nurse because the only thing we could aspire to be was either a nurse a teacher you know what I'm saying and so that is too limiting for us I'm motivated to help these kids learn and do the things that they need to do to aspire to be whatever they want to be or whatever anyone else would want to be and so that has kept me you know kind of working with the kids and motivated to and when we get to a point where we have a black president you know I want everybody to feel like hey you know it doesn't matter who you are what color you are look you can be that president and I know my grandson I was working on him since he came out Harvard University because that's where most of the president and at one time he was saying he wanted to be president because that was my dream that not that he would become that but he could say because we couldn't even say it you know so I want to see if anyone in the audience had any questions they want to ask of our distinguished panelists I too serve the military so as you made your decision to go into the military with the service that you have did your experience as a freedom rider give you more passion but more strength to develop through the things you've gone through in the military because I made it and I was an officer and I struggled and I carried for my enlisted people and other military officers who didn't have the courage to stand so did you find you had more courage because of your previous experience so because when you go through just to give you an example of some of the things that happened when we were in this prison I don't know if you remember they showed very briefly those cells and then those windows remember the windows on the building that was like I think like these here that's all we saw while we were in there we saw the cell one time a week and that was to take a shower and the rest of the time we were in our cells very confining very structured and for me in order to do that you have to not let them get in your mind you need to get in their mind and I think that's what the freedom being a freedom writer gave me the courage I think to in fact I know that I could do anything that I really set my mind to because 39 days is a long time to be in a small cell with four other people in that role I don't think we've named it and it was I mean just the sound of those doors I can hear them opening and closing and swinging and all that type of stuff and to know that you aren't free to do what you want to do that's humbling yes did I what? did I what? oh yeah we sung all the time we were like from the radio we used to have these contests among the cells and we all pick out a song now I am the worst singer but we sung in the still of the night by James Brown one of my favorites so yes we sung a lot and it helped we make up songs and all kind of stuff so yes that's a good question coming from a young person especially because one of the things that I do teach about in my civil rights class is the importance of singing and songs so just to interject and then we'll go back to the audience about why the songs were so important how they made you feel or what kind of messages they got across why do you think music was so important to the civil rights? what else were you going to do? you had no paper so you couldn't write nothing you know you ate three times a day and I don't know they must have got cooks from I don't know where they got their cooks from but ooh it was horrible you know you're hungry and days you get this they used to make for breakfast stuff called corn meal mush I never had nothing like that all there was was corn meal and with water it's what it was with eyeballs it was hard corn bread with so much pepper in it like you didn't even need to season nothing because they had already seasoned it for you you know so the only thing you just had to do what you had to do and that's why I think singing and we make up songs you know the past kind of message along you kind of get this little because it reached the next cell with stuff and you go to the bathroom when you had your one shower and we used to have a parade as you walked to the shower with your towel you know anything to just make us laugh and not be so depressed because I wasn't depressed when I was in there I mean we had good conversations but but from Arizona did you know the freedom songs when you got there and did they encourage you and fire you up and Louis in her book was the library that was talking about how when she writes when we wanted to you being in this gym or you were in the paddy wagon and they would motivate themselves by singing these freedom songs did you how did those songs make you at least I like to expand on this gym little fellas question here how did those songs make you feel you know they were happy songs you know we didn't sing sad stuff we sung happy songs and if you go to church you know how you're in the choir and you have the main singer and then you have your background singers you know that's how we taught each other songs because one person would start meeting you know and then we just repeat what basically what they had sung and then they put some words and then we we were like the background singers and I know that my brother would talk about he talked a lot about the songs and he said that you know of course they were being treated so brutally that you know the songs were something that kept them going and I guess it was you know kind of a motivating fact and that was the only thing they could do was the only thing that they had you know that couldn't be taken away from them and so you know with him talking about the guy at the jail or I mean he was very angry that they kept singing and singing and singing because it was showing something that they didn't want you know it was showing that they were in jail but we can be happy we can sing we can be together we can do the whites didn't like that they never liked the songs so that was something and I mean we could sing sometimes you'd be so hoarse from singing you know and we sung a lot a lot it seems like the singing was from what I've seen and studied like a big sort of morale boost in your lowest points like my favorite historical figure is Fannie Lou Hamer I love her for a number of reasons you know she's southern and rural and from the same agricultural background as my grandparents but you know the fact that she had the nerve even after she's been you know kicked out her farm where she'd been sharecropping and beating and all these things and you know she'd go with these young people and she was like you said determined to be free and you know they would look so down at some points and then she'd just break out and song and it's like their whole mood would turn around and she had such a strong turn around and so I think it's just so important which is I'm really glad you asked that question so music is so important and it's part of this movement oh yeah I had two comments the first was thinking about this young man's question and thinking about the songs for me it just well that of course doesn't take me back but it makes me think of slavery and slave speaking they're seeing these their masters are meeting them but they're still seeing these songs and their masters are lifting their strength whether it's weight in the water or not going to let nobody turn me around those songs still empowered you and of course it angered the jailer because it's like I can't break these ends because like what I do they keep on singing and I try to break them mentally but for me it just was a source of that and then my other comment is looking at whether it's freedom writing a children's protest because of course the parents can't protest because they're the economic breadwinners so they'll either lose their jobs or lose their livelihoods but it's so many children it's like my parents would always tell me if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything and as children as youth you guys stood for something that you couldn't necessarily change the laws by yourself because of course you weren't voting but you knew you had to stand for something but then I look at unfortunately our youth of today who for many reasons seem not to stand for anything or just the wrong things and if so many of them had parents and grandparents that directly connected them to this history they would say well how can I be in a game how can I not vote how can I not go to school if this is what you know my ancestors whether they're black, latino, white this is what my ancestors did for me and they're to not aspire to do better so those are things that just you know come to my mind and I want to make a comment about that in regard to parents because when the freedom riders were arrested and they were treated so badly I was out there you know with parents who you know our parents really did not want us to get involved in this and that was because of two things I believe one is that they had come from a slavery time when it was so bad you know and now just like Ross Barnett the governor was saying there was a contentment because it was a little bit better and also because they knew that this was dangerous because prior to that you know of course blacks were being killed and there was nothing anybody could do you could walk and see your brother or your mother or what hanging and you couldn't say anything you couldn't do anything you know and so I'm thinking that they didn't want us involved because of the fear that we were going to be hurt and of course there was houses being bombed and all kinds of things going on around us or you know and like I said when Medgar Evers was killed we all ran up there you know without fear you know we're running up there but there could have been a mob there waiting to just shoot you know or whatever all of us but our parents really although they supported some of the things we did really did not want us involved and I remember my mother was really just kind of really fearful because she didn't know what was going on and my mother was a maid at that time for Millsaps College and but what happened and what she found out is that every time a freedom rider was arrested or whatever their names would be in the news the next day but what happened is that they would put their name their address, their age their school you know all this information in there so when my brother was talking about the police saying to him you know we know where you live you know that was very scary you know because we knew where the possibility was and so I think it was a really hard time for the parents wanting this to happen but not wanting something to happen to the kids because you know what would happen in cocktail and just in that shall I experience the racism as a group of us black students that experienced it it was really blatant and my mother and those parents stepped in and put that out in the public and it was on the radio and this was in the Dallas area in cocktail Texas and I never asked you I didn't really even at that age as a teenager I didn't really know what you went through until growing older and actually paying attention so I'm wondering what you could have possibly thought when you saw your daughter experiencing something that you experienced and this is in like two a time that's so recent to go through almost what you went through I'm wondering what you could have possibly went through your mind and I never really asked you that you know and I'm glad you asked that but at that time there was a lot of frustration today I feel frustration because we have fought battles back in the 60's in the 40's and you know we have fought battles that we continue fighting today and it's so frustrating that we keep going over and over and over and people are saying oh we're much better this is happening racism is we're afraid to call racism racism today and so it's very frustrating because I was fighting for you I was sacrificing for you and my grandson and the kids that I worked with and to see us go continue to go through this it's extremely humiliating and very frustrating and at that particular time in Coppell that was frustrating and but in a sense motivating as well because I knew that I needed to keep fighting and keep teaching the kids and keep you know in the knowledge of what has happened for Martin Luther King we brought you know for freedom riders for panel discussions and we went from we went to we went to Jetson ISD and we went to two of the schools there and another school private school Keystone and I'm telling you those kids were so in awe of the panel the stories and this is something that we need to continue doing we need to keep the history alive so that these kids can have something they can hold on to so that they know that there is a foundation here so that they know that there's something that we need to continue fighting for because it's only a little bit you know but it's still a struggle and so that's that frustration is still there for me my research papers were always centered on I could not learn you know and Booty talks about the summer of 1963 it was the summer before voting they were trying to they were trying to register people voting that was when our next big wave of violence took place in Mississippi well I'm sorry but it's always Mississippi or Birmingham but it wasn't as bad as Mississippi or Birmingham I have to say but do you remember the pressure ramping up of the climate ramping up again and we were approaching 1964 because this is the last ditch effort the vote is the vote is at stake for the African American they are going in trying to sign people some people are so poor and they didn't even know what voting was she said they didn't know the vote was back and the college is coming up a little we don't want to register people freedom of summer was going to be the next year what was the climate that you know was and Moody talked about it being stress school what year was it it 63 64-65 I graduated in 65 and that next year was when the schools were actually integrated and kids were being bused I have classmates who were involved in that but I'm telling you I was so glad that I missed that and there's a real good reason I don't know if we have time for but the teachers we were in black schools and our teachers really really fought to teach us because we didn't have the materials we didn't have the things that we needed so they went through everything they could creatively come up with so that we would learn and during that time it never got better it didn't get better during those years it continued and it was so stressful for everybody because the movement has started and there was no turning back and so we continued the fight and I remember my mother she was a maid from Milsep's college but she was also a maid and she was there and I never rode the city but as kids we walked everywhere but one day where there was one city bus that was used sort of like a school bus in the black area and it would take us to Jackson State University from anywhere and I used to ride that bus and when I would get on it I would sit in the first seat because that's and I was okay so my mother asked me to go with her to clean this professor's house one day the only time she ever asked me that and we had to ride the bus and so when I went there were other maids I know you've seen help I'm real familiar with that but anyway the other maids were standing out there while waiting for the bus so I got on first of course and my mother came to pay so when I got on I did what I had done on the other bus I just sat down in that first long seat well you know okay ask me what happened because you know I'm in the movement I'm in the movement okay so my mother and the other maids got on of course they went all the way to the back and my mother was calling me gal you know she was going like that come on back here I didn't move now in front of me was two whites a white gentleman I hesitate to call him that but anyway and a young lady and then on the other side of me was a white person this guy got up and started calling me nigger was not even bad he was calling me names that I you know that were really really terrible and so the black women in the back they were getting their umbrellas ready they used to carry them you know because you know if he had touched me they were going to beat his butt I'm sure of that but anyway he got down on the step of the of the bus like to get off at the next exit and you know he continued just verbally abusing me so bad but my inclination was to sit there okay although my mom and all the other blacks wanted me to come in the back so it was a very frustrating time you know during those times because you were kind of in between you know what do you do I mean we're fighting for these rights but we're not getting them you know so we have to continue fighting and that's what happened we just continued trying to make it better oh yes I was born in the 70s so again a very different experience you've been from Mississippi you've been from Arizona right I wonder what was the racial climate like here in San Antonio for during that time I mean I don't you two wouldn't know but if there's anyone here that would know you have freedom riding going on you have you know ground versus a board of ed and things are happening in the south but here we are in the southwest there's still segregation but what was it like between blacks, Latinos and whites here during that time by the during this period from a little bit I'm not just from teaching at a new TSA so long having students be interested there are you know very much issues even though San Antonio is one of those cities that tries to desegregate quietly so there might not be the violence that you see in other areas but there's still very much systemic issues like I'll have people tell me you know if you were on the west side or the east side in some places it was like being in their language a third world country because of the lack of paved roads and the lack of you know running water you know still having outhouses and stuff so those kinds of effects where even where there might not be these Jim Crow laws anymore there have been particularly for Latinos in the area you know all these kinds of ways that you can segregate their children like you'll say you'll assume that every child who is you know Latino uses Spanish as the first language well they can't possibly need you know English training so they will put them they have to do the first two years of school in separate classes and then we'll make them do the first two years for four years right so they get behind their white counterparts or whatever even though you know Latinos are by law white they're definitely not treated like white people right but I mean there are still issues like even when I came here to get the job UTSA because there are things that I wanted to get in you know black communities and you know hair care and all those kinds of things where they were very careful in my job to tell me well you know the east side of town is the historically black side of town you know they're very and there had been lots of debate about where my school was built but this is supposed to be a school that's serving the community at large but it's built up there on the northwest side where there aren't many black and brown people and that caused a lot of conflict so there are very much you know those kinds of racial even with the absence of you know these hard deep south Jim Crow laws you can very much see in the way that people are educated track them to certain education their living conditions or whatever you can very much see that there are race issues within San Antonio I'm sorry Texas where there are Latinos or other cultures represented they each all have to deal with their own racism too so don't do anyone the excuse that just because you're another minority group that's you're not racist some people forget that the advancement that the african-american community made that we are actually beneficiaries of that also because at any moment the white community could make us out to be the word color and that actually happened in many of our schools here in Texas where okay so we'll desegregate so we'll put you with these white students who are really Latino with the black students because we are desegregated you still get poor city services but you're desegregated so there was actually a movement in early 70s in Texas and Houston was part of it I know that for Houston I mean nearly the same and I think it was it followed San Antonio's movement where these Latino students moved, stepped out of classrooms because they were getting the same textbooks they weren't getting the same and they were getting the hand-me-down the occasions and so I think many parts of Texas they realized there's a strength and unity in all of these people who are are considered minority to gather and to support each other yet they each have their own agenda we can't we can't be ignorant of that and I think it's things like these in the library where we get a dialogue where we share ideas, where we sportify each other instead of compete for the resources that we gain more understanding I would like to commend you on your preparation you didn't control the San Antonio and you speak in such an authority I mean in such a knowledgeable way I am weird, those of us who are in San Antonio are very we appreciate what you have come to our community and when you are able you immerse yourself in our city in our culture it's a learning process because I come from an area that's dictated by a black white binary I lived in Houston for a while but even then this is my first time having to deal with black white and brown and how has that story unfolded and how has it been the same how has it been different so it's been a learning experience but thank you I will say this San Antonio did have a kind of paternal who do you say paternal who do you say paternal he did there really was no freedom but it was kind of a moderate city like just like you said San Antonio had its problem Joss, he's the lunch counter H.O. Green, no the whole bus lane all that happened they wanted to bring and we have to thank the workers who applied in the 1950s they tried to bring Langston Hughes to San Antonio and the city fathers said no, you're not bringing Langston Hughes we're just not going to let you they appealed how are you going to tell us we can't bring in a speaker who maybe told that no, you're not bringing Langston Hughes Langston Hughes, well communists, no we're not going to let you and that was the end of that they shut that down that was how it was in San Antonio it was crazy and in East Texas it was great, it was even worse so that's our history, that's a lot of black was one of those allies of Martin Luther King and he would conclude if you want to know more about what went on in the 60s the black community the East side and the West side how we existed how we were valid what I would agree or anything, you just might own some of the archives where you will read a lot of things that were going on at the time what was happening with the segregated high school which was illusively or a second college that was the segregated college that you went to so it's quite an interesting history and certainly we're not going to repeat you but there is a lot there so we enjoy your research and the black papers too recently became available at Trinity I'm so excited about that his papers are they're still working through them and getting them cataloged but you can see access to a limited extent wouldn't it be boring? and you're right, they're very definitely punching themselves because my idol is known for saying nobody's free to everybody's free so as long as we're mistreating people or seeing people be mistreated our freedom is not guaranteed good and that's why the struggle continues it continues and our kids need to understand that we're headed out of here and we need to pass the torch we need the kids to understand that you need to take this torch and carry it further because it's not over so that's very important and maybe one last question that's right that is so right so we'd like to thank our panelists again please if the library personnel have anything you want to talk about as a gesture of appreciation the San Antonio Public Library Foundation allowed me to buy some books for you guys to say thank you as a gift for speaking for us today thank you kind of library would I be if I didn't give you a move thank you, I appreciate it I really hope that you enjoyed today's information and that you enjoyed today's program again the videos are available on YouTube which you can use our wifi to access it also is available on DVD for you to borrow with your own library card if you'd like to learn more about the African American experience in the United States we certainly have many books and other materials that are available in our public libraries one last thing please fill out the survey we need to know your input and understand some of the comments that you would like to leave with us to develop and bring to you better and bigger programs again this program was made available by the San Antonio Public Library Foundation and the National NEH the National Education Endowment for Humanities through their created equal art screens so thank you very much and please make sure to see Gamini with the survey and please feel free to have some more refreshments there's plenty of food still thank you