Bob Zellner - Dr. King Helps Zellner Escape

 

Well, thank you. Actually, I grew up in LA, Lower Alabama. So, when I moved from South Alabama to Southampton, I thought I was moving to a different part of the country, but I found out that it wasn't that different after all. I haven’t come a long way though, I guess, from my roots in Lower Alabama. My mother and father, both went to Bob Jones College, which is now Bob Jones University. Has anybody heard of that? I'm actually named after Bob Jones. [audience laughter] He conducted the wedding ceremony for my mother and father. So, it wasn't very likely that I was going to wind up anywhere near the Civil Rights Movement. So, it was a little strange how I did that. 

 

My father was a Klansman. My grandfather was a Klansman. I graduated high school in Mobile, Alabama in 1957. That was last century, remember? [audience laughter] Some of you don't remember. I know you don't remember 1957, but-- Growing up in Alabama, I didn't realize that I would wind up in college in Montgomery, Alabama. But in Montgomery, some things were happening that we now read about in the history books. I took part in some of those things and now teach history at the Long Island University. So, every now and then when my students run into Bob Zellner in the book, they say, “Are you related to this guy in the book?” And I said, “Well, yeah, that's me.” And they say, “Boy, you lived way back then?” [audience laughter] 

 

It was a little bit like a first-grade student I spoke to recently. I do all levels of school and college in my storytelling and lectures. They did a little play for me, the first graders in Harwich Port Cape Cod. They lined up the chairs and everything, and they did the Montgomery Bus Boycott. So, one little first grader played Martin Luther King, and somebody else played Rosa Parks and somebody played the cops. They like to be cops, because they get to push you around and talk mean. [audience laughter] 

 

So, after they did the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I told them about going to school in Montgomery, Alabama, and being recruited to the Civil Rights Movement by Martin Luther King, meeting Martin Luther King and knowing Rosa Parks. And so, one little boy, one of the exercises of the class was they had to write a letter afterwards, so they wrote me a letter. And one little boy said, “I was so excited when you said that you knew Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Do you mind if I ask if you also met President Lincoln and Harriet Tubman?” [audience laughter] 

 

So, I'm not that old, actually. But the little child had it right. It was a struggle that we were in then and it's a struggle we are in now. And the one that we're talking about now is 40 years ago already. I think I was 21 when I was first beaten up and arrested in McComb, Mississippi. And I was 61 when I was last beaten up and arrested in Southampton, New York. So, we're actually talking about fairly recent history. But many of us are still involved. I remember when I first made my resolve to be involved in the movement. 

 

Many people talk about it now. We have workshops and stuff, and we say, “When was your aha moment?” Hopefully, somebody tonight maybe have an aha moment. If you do, we'll offer you to come up front and kneel with us. [audience laughter] But I remember my first aha moment occurred when I was a student at Huntingdon College. I was assigned a paper to study the racial problem. This was in a sociology class on race relations. So, we went and did all of our study and everything. And then, five of us told our professor, “We needed to go over to the Montgomery Improvement association and interview Dr. Martin Luther King. He had invented this nonviolent direct action.”

 

And our professor said, “Well, that won't be necessary.” He said, “I'm sure your research is really good, and you're going to make a real good grade, but don't go over there and see Martin Luther King.” And we said, “Well, what about Rosa Parks? She's nationally famous. People come from all over the world to study what's happened here in Montgomery. And we're writing on the same subject and we're not supposed to go right over there?” He said, “Oh, no, you'll be arrested if you go over there.” 

 

Now, being young sociologist, our interest was piqued that you could get arrested doing research. So, being young and foolish, we went over there. Anyway, we asked Dr. King if we could come. They were having a nonviolent workshop at his church. He was going to give a sermon. So, we went over and we heard this wonderful sermon from this wonderful young minister. He had told us before the service we could come, but be prepared to be arrested. And we said, “Really? That's what our professor said. We thought he was stupid.” He said, “Well, he's a pretty smart professor, because this is Montgomery, and y’all are white people from Alabama, and you may be arrested.” And we said, “Well, we have a right to come here and everything. And if we have to be arrested, we will.” 

 

So, after the service, sure enough, Dr. King came over and said, “I'm sorry, but the police have the church surrounded and they've said that you're going to all be arrested.” And we said, “Well, Dr. King, we need to escape.” [audience laughter] And that was before he was St. Martin. He had a sense of humor. He laughed, he said, “Oh, yes.” And we said, “Well, not exactly. We don't have to escape, but we have to try to escape. We have to at least make the attempt, so we can tell mom and dad and the college and so forth that we didn't just walk out and say, ‘Put the cuffs on us.’” 

 

And he said, “Okay, I tell you what.” He said, ‘I'll run out the front door.” And Ralph Abernathy said, “You take them to the back door. Maybe they'll all run around front and y’all can get out the back.’” So, Dr. King ran out the front door. All the cops ran around there and the photographers and everything. And Ralph opened the back door and said, “Go.” [audience laughter] You saw five little white boys running all out through the Black community. [audience laughter] 

 

That was the beginning of my true education. I had already been to school three years, and this is when my education began. Words were not what was important. What was important was what was happening. We knew we had a right to do that. We also had a right to get killed. We finally made it back to campus, and in comes the president and all of the administration, “Meet us in office.” So, five of us were told we had to resign from school, because we had broken the segregation laws. 

 

That night, while we were thinking about it, the Klan burnt crosses around the dormitory. And then, we were called into the office of the attorney general of the state of Alabama. We're little college students. And back in those days, college students didn't do nothing. And we said, “Boy, this is the big time right here. This man is the chief law enforcement of the whole state of Alabama, and he's taking up his time with us.” And he said, “I'm sorry to tell you, but you've fallen under the communist influence.” I'd never been out of Alabama. I said, “You mean this communist in Alabama?” And he said, “No, but they come through here.” [audience laughter] 

 

A brand-new sociological concept that you could catch something from somebody that was just coming through. But that was the idea in those days. If you were interested in civil rights or even just trying to study it, you were not allowed to do it. And now, I'm a college professor. I studied history, and I know that before The Civil War, 30 or 40 years before the Civil War, you could be anti-slavery and still live in the community. The closer they got to the war, you could not be anti-slavery anymore. Before, it was cute and eccentric that so and so is against slavery. He's a member of our community. We allow him to stay here. But when the war approached, they'd kill him or run him out of the state. And that was what was happening in Alabama when I was in college. 

 

We were coming to the second revolution. We were coming to the second civil war, and it became impossible to be at center. So, they gave me a choice of knuckle under or become a rebel. Well, I don't know what it was. Maybe it was because daddy was a Klansman. Maybe it was because granddaddy was a Klansman. I said, “You can't tell me what to do. I'm going to join SNCC. I'm going with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Comity.” Little did I know what I was getting into, because it was Martin Luther King, Reverend Martin Luther king, that started me on a life of crime. [audience laughter] 

 

And now, it's strange when I stand up in front of my history class and I say, like all SNCC people, “I've been arrested 25 times in five Southern states. 30 charges, including criminal anarchy. Once in Danville, Virginia, I was charged with the John Brown statute.” Now, John brown was hanged for that. And it said that we incited the Black population acts of war and violence against the white population. They broke the church door down and came in and dragged us off. 

 

1963, one of the bloodiest campaigns in the Civil Rights Movement. Nobody knows about Danville, Virginia. It happened over and over again, little local struggles where ordinary people did extraordinary things. We were privileged and proud to do that. And now, there's been enough time that's lapsed between that time and now and this is history. So, we were your age when I was in jail with Chuck in Baton Rouge, charged with criminal anarchy, facing life imprisonment, death sentence, whatever. I think I was 21. 

 

Brenda Travis, who had just been arrested up in McComb, Mississippi, was 14 years old. So, that's the kind of revolution that we made. Once we started that revolution, once the young people got involved, by 1960, it spread, as Connie said, 70,000 students across the south and across the country engaged in that struggle. So, we still talk about it, we still go back and touch that struggle, but we bring it forward. Thank you.