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 Askia At-Large
Askia Muhammad
Columnist Page
Friday, February 11, 2005; Page 20
The Civil Rights Reunion I Never Had
My Rites of Passage into the Civil Rights Movement occurred Friday the 13th, August 1965. The Watts Riot. Watts changed everything in American race relations. But before that, from my clue-less vantage point in Los Angeles, I kind of knew very little about the Civil Rights Movement.
On my last trip driving home with my mother to Mississippi in 1961, I knew that there were “Freedom Riders” in the state and that in the wake of Emmett Till six years earlier, riding around the state in a new car with California license plates was not a safe thing to do.
That’s all I knew. I was in La-la-land in Southern California, determined to be a success strictly on the content of my contribution, not my skin color
In Watts there were 32 killed. I dare say all were Black. More than 3,000, mostly Blacks, were arrested. It wasn’t just a bacchanal of looting and burning though. Watts was an insurrection, even among the un-initiated like me.
But I’ve never heard of any Watts reunions though. Hey, where would we meet anyway? The County Jail?
I took a very different route to the memorial commemoration recently held in Washington for Dr. James Forman, the former SNCC Executive Secretary and driving force of the movement, the Revolution.
The room was noisy at People’s Congregational Church that Saturday afternoon. It was the most eclectic group of people I had ever seen. From SNCC veteran Willie Ricks, who said he “gave the White man his name back,” and now wants to be called by an African name, to a White SNCC veteran who has since converted to Islam.
More than 100 former members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were gathered at a reception before the official ceremony. The attendees were eating and greeting allies from life-and-death-battles fought 40 years ago.
It was clearly as much their reunion as it was a memorial service for their beloved leader.
The activists made themselves right at home, reminiscing with one another. NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond posed for pictures with his friends of course, but he also held the camera often, taking pictures of others. It was just that kind of a party.
Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Milton Coleman and his wife Dr. Jennifer Lawson, former President of the Public Broadcasting Service and now General Manager of Howard University’s WHUT-TV were both ushers. It was like “the old times” must have been.
“Brothers and Sisters, if we can change the world, we can change our behavior for a few minutes and be quiet,” said Lawrence Guyot into the microphone before the official service began. Mr. Guyot hails from Pass Christian, Mississippi and he was an early 1960's recruit into the SNCC cadre. Just one day earlier the Civil Rights community had been shocked to learn of the death of actor Ossie Davis.
The room was still for a moment and then the conversations resumed. They talked about their “Freedom Summers” in the South, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the ever-present danger of imprisonment, beatings and death, which stalked them constantly.
The memorial service was celebratory, not somber. It was like an old-time SNCC rally might have been. The SNCC singers sang the Freedom Songs. No one had forgotten the words. A White guy standing near me clapped way, off the beat--just like he must have done four decades ago. Spirited speakers from a variety of perspectives--from sharecroppers, learned Blacks like Dr. Vincent Harding and Bob Moses, and from Black and White students from all over the U.S.--spoke at length about Dr. Forman, and about the vitality of their movement.
The speakers had lost none of the revolutionary zeal that distinguished SNCC from more conservative Civil Rights groups in the 1960s. “Miss Rice, we did not fight for you to go and start wars all over the world,” said Dorie Ladner, a SNCC recruit who joined the movement when volunteers came to her hometown in Hattiesburg, Miss. in the early days. Her remarks were directed to Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the new Secretary of State, and they drew a standing ovation from the decidedly anti-war audience.
“James Forman--in the language of the country’s most recent presidential inaugural address--lived a life of idealism and character that should make every American proud,” said Bob Moses, now director of the Algebra Project which teaches mathematics and science to Black Mississippi school children. Along with Dr. Forman, Mr. Moses was a leading SNCC strategist.
“James Forman struggled to renew the values that sustain this country. James Forman did so with a loyalty, honor and courage that ought to make every American proud. James Forman struggled to break centuries old American patterns of violence and terror.
“James Forman was a force for freedom who insisted that the government of this country answer to its citizens. James Forman had to, and did, face home-grown terrorists in his own home. Nobody stood taller than James Forman on behalf of a higher standard of freedom for all the peoples of this country,” Mr. Moses continued.
“Time is short, and we do not have much time and it is time we stop mincing words. . . . No oppressed people ever gained their liberation until they were ready to fight,” is how Dr. Forman himself was remembered in a quote in the memorial program. |
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