Interview with Courtland Cox

Cox, Courtland, 1941- ; McKiernan, Stephen

Courtland Cox spent his childhood between Trinidad and New York City. He went to Howard University and eventually became a civil rights activist. He joined a group called the Non-violent Action Group (NAG) to fight against white supremacy and segregation and then became a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Throughout his years as an activist, Cox helped organized groups in order to prevent segregation from occurring in the world.

2011-08-11

In copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

142:55

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Courtland Cox
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 11 August 2011
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:04):
Testing one, two. Just hold these tapes as we go. One of the first questions I like to always ask is, how did you become-

CC (00:00:16):
Would it be better if we sat at a table that you could just-

SM (00:00:19):
Oh, no, this is fine. I sat many couches.

CC (00:00:25):
There is a table. Let us look at the other room. You want the lights on here or just-

SM (00:00:31):
Oh, no, we are fine. Yep, we are fine. Got my new glasses too, these cost me a lot of money. How did you become who you are? The first question I always ask is, what were those early years in your life when you were in elementary school and secondary school before you went off to Howard? And I always like to find out a little about where you grew up, your family, what your parents did. Who your mentors, role models were, before you ever met Bayard Rustin.

CC (00:01:04):
Well, I was born in the United States in Harlem, actually. And my mother had moved here from Trinidad. And when I was four years old, my mother sent my sister and myself back to Trinidad to live with my grandmother because she was a single parent in the United States, so it was very difficult. So we went back and I lived in Trinidad from the time I was four, until my grandmother died in (19)52, and came back here around 11, 12 years old. I think probably the biggest influence on me, in that period, was the emphasis on education that my family had. Even though my mother's generation did not go to college, my grandmother had nine children and probably about seven survived. And each of them, education was big for their families and many of them, and those who were ahead of me, had won at that time what they called island scholarships. Some attended Cambridge, some attended Oxford, some went to LSE, London School of Economics, others came to the United States. So probably the first big influence in my life was the huge stress for education and becoming educated. When I came back to the United States, around 12, we were moved out of Harlem into the projects in the Bronx, called Throggs Neck Projects. And at that point, I observed America from that vantage point. And so in (19)53, (19)54, America was a much different place as it dealt with the question of race. But a lot of the pathologies that we see today were present at that point. Kids were getting on drugs. There was heroin at that point, smoking marijuana. A lot of them were not going to school. There were no jobs. People overtly told them, "Why go to school? You are not going to have a good college education." So all of that was emphasized in the society very openly. They absorbed it. And as kids 15, 16, 17, by that time, their initiatives were already destroyed. But the thing for me was the background that I had from Trinidad in terms of education, in terms of emphasis, in terms of my mother's view, that kind of inoculated me from that environment. And so therefore, while all of them were dropping out of school, I was going to school, I was fit. My sister and I were probably two of the four people that continued to go to high school. But we dealt with high school anyhow. So that is before I got to Howard University. The whole emphasis on education, my upbringing in the Caribbean was probably the major influence of my life.

SM (00:05:12):
At what point when you were young, you could be junior high or senior high, when you're reading about the history of the United States, and you come from Trinidad and how important education is in your family, that you read the history of the United States and there was a point in time when African Americans were not allowed to read. They were punished if they were caught reading. And this is going back to even to the founding of the nation and what happened in the 1800s.

CC (00:05:49):
I think the discussion I had with the guys who were 15 and 16 years old, it was now I think about it, their analysis of the society and what was open to them and what was real or not real was very profound. I am now understanding a lot better. I think my discussion, because coming back to the United States was a culture shock in the sense that all the frames of reference that were here was something I did not really have. I was coming from one culture to another culture, but my understanding of the American environment really, my first impressions were really developed with talking to the young people who, at the end of the day, whether they be in jail, killed or so forth, but they understood what the discussion was.

SM (00:07:05):
If you were to talk about mentors and role models as you got older, obviously Bayard Rustin was one, and there were many others, Dr. King. Was there, even in your schooling here in the United States, you had your grandmother, you had your family, but was there a teacher, was there some teacher in school or some figure in the news that in the 1950s that stood out for you as a young [inaudible]?

CC (00:07:36):
I would say the name that comes to mind, but this was in the Caribbean, Ms. Curry. But when I came back to the United States, my mother sent me to Catholic schools to make sure that that shield was there. My sense is that when I came back, I went to a school that was, finishing the eighth grade or so, was the all black order of nuns at St. Aloysius School. I think it was the name after St. Martin De Porres. So that was my first thing. And then I went to Catholic high school. But that was a different shock because there were four blacks in the whole school.

SM (00:08:39):
And how many were in the school?

CC (00:08:41):
Probably hundreds of kids. Literally the whole school. And I think we were the first class. And by the second year of high school, I was the only black, no, I think there were two of us, but third year I was the only one. So coming from the contrast from Catholic school where you're the only black or one or two in back to the projects, the contrast was quite interesting as I remember it.

SM (00:09:22):
And were there any books as a young boy or young man that you read early on? Writers that inspired you?

CC (00:09:35):
I do not know inspired but the one that James Joyce, The Portrait. Reading that in Catholic school, that was quite, and also my sense is that the other one that impressed me was Zola's book. The title does not come to mind right away.

SM (00:10:12):
Émile Zola?

CC (00:10:14):
Émile Zola's book. We talked about the trial. But I think at that point, the whole discussions of right and wrong and good and bad, seems to me those kinds of things attracted my attention, the things that focused on that, right and wrong and good and bad and so forth.

SM (00:10:43):
My next question gets into the Howard years. How did you end up at Howard University? Why did you pick that school? And talking about your years in Howard, how did you become an activist for the first time? And do you remember the first time that you ever spoke up about a subject that upset you and you really became vulnerable for the first time?

CC (00:11:09):
My sense is that after I got out of college, no, while I was in high school, my mother's place was the place, that was the stop that everybody came to from Trinidad, my relatives. And my cousin, Erskine, had been accepted to Howard. So he was going back and forth to Howard, I think I was working in the post office and I was 18 or 19, I was making in 1958, (19)59, I was making $2 an hour plus 20 percent plus 10 percent night differentials. So I was making $2.20 an hour, which was a lot of money during that time. But I said to myself, "I really do not want to be doing this all." I was a postal clerk. It was not like I was-

SM (00:12:27):
This is after you graduated high school?

CC (00:12:30):
The year after I took the test, I became a postal clerk, which was a career for most people. And I was, after six months, I said, "Nah, there must be a better way. Must be a better way than this." And so I talked to my cousin about Howard, Erskine Arlene, because at that time Howard just gave a test entrance exam. You did not have to take SATs and all that. You had an entrance exam. So one day got on the Greyhound bus, came down to Washington, I remember it was snowing in New York, when I got to Washington it was sunny. And took the test and went back home. And short time later, they said, "Hey, you passed. You are good if you want to come." And at that point, it cost $7.50 a semester hour to go to school. And so it was like $107.50 for 15 hours, $40 room and board, $40 for food. And so I was working at post office making serious money and so I saved my postal money and came down to Howard to go to school.

SM (00:14:08):
And you were there four year.

CC (00:14:08):
Four years, that is right.

SM (00:14:10):
What years were those now?

CC (00:14:13):
I came down in (19)60 and left (19)64.

SM (00:14:18):
Harris Walford went there, but I think he went to law school there, did not he?

CC (00:14:21):
Who is this?

SM (00:14:21):
Harris Walford.

CC (00:14:23):
Walford? I do not know. I am not sure. He was a little ahead of me, I am sure.

SM (00:14:28):
I think he went to law school.

CC (00:14:30):
Law school there, right.

SM (00:14:36):
During those years, what was being a student at Howard during those years?

CC (00:14:39):
I am telling you a lot of energy. I think we started out, we did a number of things at Howard. We did the civil rights discussion. We did the newspaper. We did a Project awareness. We did a bunch. We were the energy bunnies. We started out-

SM (00:15:11):
Who is "we" now?

CC (00:15:13):
People like Stokely Carmichael, Bill Mahoney, Mike Thelwell, Ed Brown, people like that. We were at Cleve Sellers, who's now president of Voorhees. We started out in trying to, when I came here in (19)60, a number of things were in Washington. First, Glen Echo, the amusement park was segregated. The Washington Post had ads for coloreds and whites. They were huge swaths of the city that blacks could not live in. A number of stores, the better stores, blacks could not try on clothes. The police force was mainly guys from the south who could not find jobs elsewhere being put on the police force by the congressional people. The district was run hands on by the Congress of the United States. So we came into this environment and we started off by, right after the Freedom Rides and right after the whole question of the sit-ins, we started testing the kind of segregated facilities that they had in Washington. And we formed a group called the Non-Violent Action Group, which was one of the student groups that comprised SNCC, Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. So that is how I started getting into it. Looking at the situation that was here in Washington in terms of the segregated facilities, the segregated political structure. The segregated economic structure. Not only does that mean Washington Redskins had no black players. So one of the first things I did was picketed RFK, what we call RFK Stadium now, because they had no black players on their team.

SM (00:17:45):
Was Bobby Mitchell the first?

CC (00:17:47):
Yeah, he came the year after.

SM (00:17:49):
From the Cleveland Browns.

CC (00:17:51):
He came in after. I think the first thing they were going to do was they were to get, what is his name from Syracuse who died?

SM (00:17:59):
Ernie Davis.

CC (00:18:01):
Ernie Davis, yes. But he died and then they brought in Bobby Mitchell. And the Redskins owner name is not coming to me now. What's his name?

SM (00:18:16):
[inaudible]

CC (00:18:16):
No-no-no. I am talking about why back, because the Redskins was a team of the South. Because remember, most football teams at that period in 1960 did not exist in the South. They did not go to the south till later on. Most of the teams, they had maybe 12 teams. You were talking about the Cleveland. The football was an industrial, northern industrial phenomena. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, New York, places like that. Philadelphia. So when you talk about the South and the West, they did not come until after (19)60 when you had the AFC and all these other guys coming in. So you got to remember that the Redskins were the team of the South. That is what everybody, there was no Dallas Cowboys, or there was no North Carolina Panthers or Atlanta Falcons. They did not have all that. They had the Redskins. This was their team. And so if they are broadcasting in the South they were not going to have a lot of black people on North's teams. So that was particularly important.

SM (00:19:34):
It is interesting because Ernie Davis, I am from Syracuse, right? So Ernie is dead from Leukemia, so sad.

CC (00:19:45):
He had a lot of potential. A big guy. We started with that non-violent action group. We had a group coming together, as I mentioned some of the people, Ed Brown, Cleve, Stanley Wise, Stokely, Mary Felice Lovelace, Muriel Tillinghast. We had a group of very, very bright people.

SM (00:20:20):
How big was the student population at that time? And were you the rare group, the ones that were really activists?

CC (00:20:29):
We were the rare group, the student population I could not tell you. Probably had to be, I do not know, probably at least maybe 15, 16, maybe 2000. I am not sure, but about at least that. But we were the group that we were seen. Interestingly enough, we were seen by the students as unusual. We were seen by the professors as their children of hope. So we were treated by the professors, at least certain professors, but I think a number of them, with a certain kind of, "We are behind you. We want to talk to you. We want to nurture you." And probably the lead in that was Sterling Brown. Sterling Brown, he did for us a number of things. He would come and he would lecture about the blues in our dormitory. We could get him to do it. He would come and talk. He would read his poetry. He would talk about jazz. But more importantly, for a small group of us, Butch Khan and Ed and Tom Khan, and people like that. Tom and Butch were also very key in this discussion. He would take us over at his house, open up some bourbon and talk about the voice, talk about the people that he knew. So it was not a book discussion. He is talking about friends. Because one of the things that interests me today, because when I am talking to people in SNCC, it is always a discussion about your life. It is always a discussion about memories. It is always a discussion about a number of things. My perspective is really just, these are the things I did. That is what it is. It is only when people are talking to me that there is a sense of history. And so what Sterling Brown did was took us inside the lives of the voice, about what he liked, what he liked to eat, what did he like to drink, how'd he wear his pass, what people would say about it, the whole discussion. He gave us a sense, there were people like Conrad Snow, who was a professor up there. People like Emmett Dorsey. They were all people who really said to us, "You are not radicals. You are not outside the mainstream." The message to us constantly from those professors were, "You are the hope of our future." And I think enough has not been said about a lot of those professors who, like Patricia. Patricia, she ran for mayor. Patricia Roberts Harris, she was secretary of HUD. She was also an ambassador too. And I remember in a little while, but she was also Dean of Women at Howard University. And Mary Felice Lovelace, who was going out, she and Stokely were an item for a long time. They went out. And when she would come back late from demonstrations, while it was a strict rule for the other women, Harris, "Well, you are coming in from demonstrations. All right." So they gave us space. And so I think on that side of it, we did that at Howard. While we were also viewed as a small band, people also looked at what we were doing. And I think probably Stokely had the biggest impact on this, is that he would also involve the other students, and going out to demonstrate. He would tell them that we were going in a demonstration, but there was a great party afterwards. And so to go to the party afterwards, these kids would go demonstrate. So we would swell our ranks with that. Now, I think for both Stokely and myself in particular, and Tom Khan, Tom obviously was very close to Bayard, but we also knew, coming from New York, both of us, knew about some of the discussions that were going on. So one of the things that we did, and this is really Tom Khan's brainchild, we created a thing called Project Awareness. And the same NAG people who were doing the demonstrations were the same NAG people who did the organization of the Project Awareness. And the first event was a debate between Bayard Rustin and Malcolm X on separation versus integration.

SM (00:27:14):
Is that the one where they are on the stage and it was taped?

CC (00:27:17):
Yeah.

SM (00:27:18):
That is a story.

CC (00:27:19):
Yes, it is. But it is interesting. This work in a number of ways. First of all, it revealed to us a split at Howard University. The head of the political science department, his name was Martin, Professor Martin, thought that it was unworthy to have Malcolm X at Howard University. Emmett Dorsey, who was a professor who was very strong on the African American status in the United States, shot pool down at the pool hall with the guys and so forth, embraced Malcolm and then moderated the debate. And he was the one that did that. Now, this was our first debate. Cramton Auditorium had just opened up. It held 1500 people. And you asked me how many people we had. We had 1500 people there. The place was packed to the gills, not only packed to the gills, they were people banging all night on the doors trying to get in. And Bayard did something that was very interesting. Each speaker had, I think, half an hour to present their case, and Bayard was up first, he spoke on the question of integration. Malcolm was speaking on the question of separation. Bayard spoke for 15 minutes, and he said, "You always-"

CC (00:29:03):
... 15 minutes. And he said, "You always hear my point of view. I am going to give Malcolm 15 minutes of my time so that you can fully hear his." And I am telling you, Malcolm was one of the best speakers around. You could not believe... I mean, he had a profound effect. So after that first event, people looked at us even more... And the professors were even more embracing, and the students were amazed. "God, how could you do that? How could you pull that off?" The next event we had on the Project Awareness was called Whither the Negro Writer. It was moderated by Sterling Brown. We had Ossie Davis, we had John Killens. We had Jim Baldwin. And it was just, again, another fabulous thing. And we used to have little after parties for the guests. Sidney Poitier flew in, said, "I heard you guys were in town. I just thought I would come and party, hang out." I mean, it was like... So now we really think, "Wow, what is going..." And then the third thing that we had was on thermonuclear warfare with Herman Kahn from, I think it was the Hudson Institute, and Norman Thomas debating the issue of thermonuclear warfare. So now we have established not only the demonstrations about trying to go against the large society, but on the big issues of the day, we are now driving that train. And in addition to that, also, Mike Falwell, who was part of the NAG.

SM (00:31:12):
Group, was the editor of the newspaper, The Hilltop, which received award after award. So not only now we are part of a group that does this in terms of outside the campus, this in terms of the campus, and then Stokely and Tom Kahn were on the student council. And Tom was very smart. He says, "I do not want to be the president. I just want to be the treasurer." He ran for being the treasurer. And he understood that was where it is. So basically we had spread, we had an entity, an organizing entity that functioned both inside and outside the campus that had a profound effect on what was going on. And the other thing was that we were probably some of the best students in the campus too. So this is, I think for even today when I talk to the people we were in school with today, they remember that, the energy we brought to the discussion. So I would say that the profound discussion at Howard to me was that. Now I think off-campus, I think probably, I would say the smartest person I had ever seen politically in terms of these things was Bayard. Because he had seen a lot of these movies. He had understood the politics. And at that point we had a lot of things with the Trotskyites and the Stalinists and all that kind of stuff. And he had been through all of that whole era, and he was able to help us sink through and deal with all of it because we had a focused message. We did not need to go into the battle of who lost Moscow and all that kind of stuff. We wanted to know what is it we were going to do here? Where were we going to go? So my sense is that, at least at Howard, through that whole Howard period, there are a number of things I found to be very important. First, I guess sense from the professors that we were Children of Hope. I think the second thing was that the energy that we were able to bring to the discussion, whether we were dealing with demonstrations or whether we were dealing with the newspaper articles, we were able to practice our craft of being very good at whatever we did. We did not lose. The whole organizing discussion, we were very good at it. The third, we were big influences of the young people who were on campus as to what was going to be their future, breaking the barriers that they had come into. And so I think in the political sense, probably Bayard was the most important. I think on the cultural historical sense; Sterling Brown was the most important. Whatever became of Sterling?

CC (00:35:16):
He died.

SM (00:35:17):
How long after?

CC (00:35:20):
Sterling was in his high (19)80s. Sterling was in the high (19)80s, and I assume Sterling died maybe, it seemed like 15, 20 years ago.

SM (00:35:36):
Okay.

CC (00:35:36):
Yeah.

SM (00:35:38):
Hey. That is a great description of your time in Howard. And the thing is, I did not know Stokely was there. I knew Ed was there.

CC (00:35:47):
Stokely was there.

SM (00:35:48):
Stokely was very-

CC (00:35:50):
He was very profound. And Cleve Sellers, Stanley Wise, Muriel Tillinghan. I mean, those people were very... Not only that, let me just also go one other point. In terms of SNCC. You had two kinds of views coming out of SNCC. The one is John Lewis's view about nonviolence. And his view was that this was a philosophy, a way of life. And what you were trying to do was appeal to people's better selves. The Howard people did not have that view. Howard people believed, thought that nonviolence was important because you did not have enough to be not non-violent. And that at the end of the day, that people operated out of their own interests, not out of any kind of goodness at the heart. So I think probably the thing while at Howard and the big debate, the NAG group in terms of SNCC, was from the beginning, our views were much sharper, much more political than the Nashville group with John and Diane Nash Bevel, and those others.

SM (00:37:30):
That is James Bevel's wife, right?

CC (00:37:32):
Yes.

SM (00:37:32):
And he died at about two years ago.

CC (00:37:33):
He died about two years ago.

SM (00:37:35):
We had him on campus twice.

CC (00:37:37):
Right. Yeah. Right.

SM (00:37:37):
And so you really met Bayard right there at Howard.

CC (00:37:41):
Yeah. Met Bayard at Howard.

SM (00:37:42):
In that debate.

CC (00:37:43):
He came to the debate. Yeah.

SM (00:37:47):
Now, how did he continue to influence the people? He came to the debate and Nelson came and they went on. You guys were with SNCC and you had your issues on campus. You were involved with many other people. Did you still stay in touch with them?

CC (00:37:58):
Oh yeah.

SM (00:37:59):
And the Congress of Racial Equality too?

CC (00:38:01):
Yeah, because one of the things, especially in terms of the demonstrations, I stayed with in touch with Bayard a lot, probably more than the others. But I think that he was very helpful in terms of trying to get us through the political thickets that we found ourselves, particularly in the demonstrations in Baltimore and the various kinds of people interests who wanted to come and take over. So, Bayard, I remember once we were in a big fight with some people in Baltimore, and Bayard got the national headquarters of court to make him a representative. So he came into the meeting as the National Representative Corps, and he just devastated the people who wanted to go against us. But the other big thing was, you remember also, Bayard was the organizer, I guess for the second March on Washington, second proposed March. So... That is definitely you.

SM (00:39:30):
Hello? Hello? How would they get my number? Bye. Amazing. I am on Facebook a lot.

CC (00:39:53):
Oh you are?

SM (00:39:55):
Yeah, I am on Facebook and I have friends, and I belong to certain organizations through Facebook. They sell your name to everything.

CC (00:40:03):
Well, guess what? I avoid that.

SM (00:40:06):
Facebook?

CC (00:40:09):
Yeah.

SM (00:40:09):
I am starting to see the dangers of it. Definitely seeing the dangers of it. Now, I will get back here. Amazing that they got up. They should have my home phone. They should not be having my cell phone number.

CC (00:40:22):
Well, that is easy to get.

SM (00:40:23):
Yeah. One of the things, you worked on the March on Washington.

CC (00:40:30):
Right. Yeah.

SM (00:40:31):
And you were the-

CC (00:40:32):
Representative of SNCC. And let me say to you that I am not sure SNCC would have been represented at the march in Washington, unless it was reason I argued for it. And I argued because my trust with Bayard. The people in SNCC were not at the initial points just ready for it, because you have got to remember, there were a number of competing interests in March and Washington, Dick Gregory and others had a view of something much more radical in terms and much more disruptive. And Bayard had something in a much more organized, much more important in terms of that. So SNCC people were torn in this discussion. And because of by my trust in Bayard, I was able to convince the SNCC people to participate. And their view was, since you want to do it, you go represent us. And that was that. So that is how we got into it. Now, I think it was an important for us to be there historically, as history has proven it was an important event. And to see Bayard having to maneuver where those guys, Roy Wilkins and the rest, I mean, he did have the protection of A. Phillip Randolph. Nobody was going to separate him from me, because as you remember, that time, the whole question... There are two issues that are much different now at this point than they were at that time. The question of homosexuality, that was just death. And the second was the question of communism and did you ever, or whatever. And Bayard had both of those on him. And so his ability to maneuver his organizational skills in terms of pulling that off under that kind of weight, political weight, because absent A. Philip Randolph, these guys would have never given Bayard the time of day if they could not deal with Randolph. And Randolph was going to have this march, especially after what happened in (19)41.

SM (00:43:18):
I read about how you were involved with changing John Lewis's speech, and I was reading in another interview that it was happening as the event was happening.

CC (00:43:29):
Yes, yes. Oh, there's a picture up there that showed we were doing it. One of those pictures we were back at the Lincoln Memorial-

SM (00:43:39):
Oh, that is that picture there?

CC (00:43:39):
Yes. Yeah.

SM (00:43:39):
Oh my God.

CC (00:43:39):
Yeah. That is what we are doing. I basically, as I said, I was representing the march of SNCC. And John's speech came out the day before, they sent the speech, then I distributed-

SM (00:43:58):
How come you did not give a speech?

CC (00:43:58):
Me? No-no. It was John's center. I do not know.

SM (00:43:59):
Yeah, he was picked by SNCC to be the man?

CC (00:44:01):
No, he was the chairman at that point.

SM (00:44:02):
Okay.

CC (00:44:05):
So John's speech was written, probably a lot of it by Julian. And I distributed it because I wanted make sure that John and SNCC did not get lost in the crowd in terms of the speeches. So I sent it out, gave it out the day before. And what happened was the Kennedy people saw it. And so they called Cardinal O'Boyle, who was a member of the March on Washington group representing the Catholic Church. And he threatened to pull out of the speak thing. And when Bayard came to us about it and asked for our support in terms of that, we told Bayard that it's all right if O'Boyle leaves. But then Bayard brought A. Philip Randolph, and A. Philip Randolph talked about how he had worked with this for 20 years and how it was important. And once he did that, then what we did was we had an old typewriter, you can see we had a portable typewriter, and Jim Foreman, John Lewis, Mildred Foreman and myself in the back of the Lincoln Memorial making the changes to the speech.

SM (00:45:35):
Unbelievable, the pressure.

CC (00:45:35):
Oh yeah.

SM (00:45:35):
The pressure is intense.

CC (00:45:42):
Oh yeah. But what it did at that point was that this country loves controversy, so basically it made John's speech much more memorable because of the controversy, because it now had something to add to it. So we published a speech at first, and we published the changed speech. Now the SNCC people did call me a sellout, John, Jim Foreman for changing the speech. But we thought that it was better to go ahead and do that. And it got much more historical recognition because of it.

SM (00:46:20):
That is amazing. And this is important. John Kennedy obviously had reservations about this whole thing.

CC (00:46:26):
Oh yes, he did.

SM (00:46:28):
And historically, at the time, correct me if I am wrong, the Southern Democrats, even in his run for the presidency, he was concerned about the Southern Democrats because if he became out too strong towards civil rights he might lose the Southern vote and all the other stuff. Then he becomes President of the United States. And we know the whole history of LBJ and what he did in civil rights. But from your experiences and from talking to John Lewis and Julian Bond and all the people, Bayard, was Kennedy just a pragmatic politician? And did he sincerely care about civil rights? Or was this just a pragmatic move on his part to get support?

CC (00:47:13):
I think that Kennedy was a smart politician, and I think he began to see the future. I do not think that Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, in any way had any strong belief in civil rights. I think he had an intellectual support of it. But in terms of if he had to choose between his intellectual kind of thing, doing good and doing well, he would choose doing well because he wanted to be president. I mean, it is an ambitious family. And so his call to Martin King was a symbolic thing that would help solidify the, at that point, the Negro vote against... Because you have to remember that Nixon had Jackie Robinson on his side, and most blacks, until (19)36, most black people were Republicans. Because remember, the Republican party was the party of Lincoln. And was only until the Depression and Roosevelt that it started turning around. And so you have people like Jackie Robinson who were Republicans who were supporting, and Jackie Robinson was a big hero. So King was a counterweight to Jackie Robinson on that side. The other thing is that I do truly think that probably the one that started to get it later on in life was Bobby Kennedy. I think that after his brother was shot, I think he became a lot more introspective. And I think only somebody who had really understood what the deal was could have given that speech the night King got killed. He's only one that you really... This was not an off the top of the head speech. This way a, I understand this. I understand this more than any of you really understand it. And I think that he understood it after his brother got killed. But before that, they were, for example, Tom Khan, Butch Khan, Stokely, and myself, we sat in his office, in Bobby Kennedy's office. And what was funny is that they decided, okay, just leave him. Wait until the building closed down and then take some wheelchairs and wheel him them out. So they knew that... And Bobby Kennedy, at the end of the day, when they had to face... They did not want to be pushed. But when they were pushed, they took the right decision in terms of sending in troops. But even at the same time, they were trying to isolate Bayard and others from Martin King because they thought they were quote, "the radical communist element." So they were doing both things at the same time. So they were very scared, both of the Southern discussion, which was centered on race, and the communist discussion, which was huge at that time.

SM (00:51:06):
And even Dr. King, if I remember correctly, he was at that group with Miles Horton. He was in the audience and they said, "He is a communist" for being at that. They were making comments about Dr. King.

CC (00:51:24):
Yeah, obviously, look, and Bayard and Martin parted ways on this issue of communism because they did not want to take the heat. And the only group that really did not care about it was SNCC. I mean, we associated with Anne Braden, we associated with Miles Horton. We went out to his place. I was in Mississippi in 1963, and a lady came up to me and she said, "I am sure glad you communists are here to help us." So she got the message about communists, communists, communists. But she said, "Well, if these guys are scared of the communists, they must be here to help us." So I just think that at the end of the day, the thing I think that SNCC did that, especially in the early days, they did two things that were very profound. Well, maybe three things. First, they broke the back of this communist discussion because they did not care and they were not old enough to be influenced by the discussion. Two, they were able to organize and stay in the communities with the people that they worked with. They did not come in and go out. And the third is that because of that, they were able to function and not be paralyzed by terrorist tactics. I think those three things, I think distinguishes SNCC in a lot of ways, especially in the period from (19)60 to (19)64.

SM (00:53:22):
And of course, did you go down to the South yourself during the Freedom Rights?

CC (00:53:28):
Yeah, yeah. No, I did not go down South for Freedom Rights, no. Stokely was there. Bill Mahoney, John Moody, a number of people from Howard, but I did not go. Dion Diamond.

SM (00:53:38):
Freedom Summer was a special year.

CC (00:53:43):
It was (19)64. Yeah, yeah.

SM (00:53:43):
Yeah. And the Schwerner, Chaney, Goodman. Boy, that must be-

CC (00:53:45):
Yeah, that was terrorism. I mean, that is basically send the message and these people, kids, would get scared. And while people were scared they were not paralyzed. And that is seems to be the key question.

SM (00:54:03):
I have a question here. Did you or your family personally experience racism? Do you ever remember yourself experiencing it personally?

CC (00:54:15):
Yeah. My sense is that at that time it was just pervasive. The messages were very clear. You never saw any people of color on TV. You got to remember that. It is just profound how... I mean for me, you never saw anybody of color. You were always told, "We could not find any qualified." You were always told that. I mean, I never went to an apartment and somebody told me, "No, you cannot rent here." That was not never the case. But it does seem to me that the ability to move within the society without barriers... I mean, I give up racists, okay. During the demonstrations and so forth, I would go to restaurants and we would be refused and that, so we knew that. I guess it is just, so we were told "We do not serve you" or "we do not serve your kind." And what's really funny, especially on Route 40, where we were demonstrating, of course remember at that point, 95 was not the major route to New York, it was Route 40. And it was only after-

SM (00:55:42):
We went through that route when we went to Florida.

CC (00:55:45):
Okay. But I remember Stokely and I, after they decided on Route 40 and so forth, to open up and desegregate the restaurants. Because frankly, we have been to hundreds of restaurants and they turned us away. So we went in to eat breakfast. And the food was god awful. And so we said to each other, is this what we have been fighting for? This is bad food. We just go back into the black community, and get some good food. We're not coming back to this food. We're not coming back to this anymore. So I just think that there were several barriers that were known and unknown by us and experienced and anticipated by us coming. And I guess the other thing is police brutality in terms of, we went down in Washington, DC, Butch Con, Ed Brown and myself. We went down to the police station to talk to them, complain to them about what we thought was police brutality. So it was an all-white station. So the desk Sergeant said to us, "Well, when you start paying my salary, you can come in here and tell me what is going on and what we should be doing." And Butch Con spoke up and said, "Well, as a matter of fact, because we citizens, we do pay your salary." The desk Sergeant reached across the thing and punched Butch in the face.

SM (00:57:48):
Oh my God. So did Butch sue him?

CC (00:57:52):
No-no-no-no. So what we did, and it was a guy named Wayne Moss, who was the union guy in town. I forgot what union it was, but so we called him.

CC (00:58:03):
... in town. I forgot what Union he was with. So, we called him. And he also knew a guy at the Justice Department, who was African American, Duncan. And I think his name... I know his father's name was Todd Duncan, the musical guy. And Duncan was, I forgot, I am not sure what his first name was. So, this African-American comes in, and so we walk back in with this African-American guy whose name is Duncan. So, Duncan says, "I'd like to speak to the person who is in charge." So, they say, "Okay. Well, here is some more of these Black people coming in here, we saw them before." So, the guy says, "Well, we do not exactly know who's in charge." Just dismissive. So, what Duncan did, he ripped out his Justice Department credentials, and said, "If nobody is in charge, I am in charge." They were like flummoxed. They could not believe. Poom! They could not believe it. Then, he took over and directed these guys what they had to do or not do. So, I am just saying to you... And Julius Hobson, who used to, he was with CORE, as you know, he would call us for demonstrations all the time. So, yeah, for me, the reason I do not focus on events of discrimination, because I was always on offense, I was always trying to break the barriers down. Therefore, I never got offended because I was always on offense. So, that is my perspective on it.

SM (01:00:10):
I see here, just, people that are going to be reading the interviews, a lot of them do not know their history, as you well know, young people. In your own just a few words, what was SNCC, when did it start, why did it start, and what were its basic goals, and who were its leaders? And I know Bob Moses was leading...

CC (01:00:37):
Oh, yeah, okay. Well, SNCC, really SNCC came as a result of the need to test the law of the land that had just been established. So, you have got to remember, in 1896 this country had declared, separate but equal, the law of the land. So, that went on till about 1954 with the Brown v Board of Education. But with the Brown V Board of Education, and later with the in-Interstate Commerce Commission laws and rulings, all of it was talked about with all deliberate speed. So, for most young Black people, we saw the same thing, the status quo, and therefore, the need to challenge and to say, "If the law on our side, we want the country to act like the Lord is on our side." So, you had the sit-ins, and then you had the freedom riots. So, the sit-ins said, we are challenging the whole concept of our right to be like everybody else and that barrier to go away. The freedom riots said, we can...

SM (01:02:05):
Hey, you are doing fine.

CC (01:02:20):
Sure.

SM (01:02:22):
Yep, that was all right. I am sorry.

CC (01:02:26):
There you go. So, you have got that the freedom riot said, we have a right to travel without being treated as second class citizens, which means, you have to sit in the back of the bus, you have to give up your seat to any White person, and when you want to use facilities, the toilets and so forth, you do not go to a nasty, dirty place which is labeled "Colored", if you want to drink water, you should drink it from the best fountain. So, all those public accommodation barriers, we were challenging that whether we had a right to do what this country now said, after the 54th Supreme Court decision and other rulings said we had a right to do. So, those two events triggered SNCC. So, what happened was, Ms. Ella Baker called together a meeting at Shore University in February 1st 1960, to talk about how you coordinated all these activities. Therefore, you got Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. And at first SNCC was a group of campus organizations. So, as I mentioned, you had the group out of Nashville with John Lewis and them, you had a group in Atlanta, the Atlanta Student Movement, you had a group up at Howard called the Non-Violent Action Group. You had groups like that, mostly on historically Black colleges. And that is how... And SNCC functioned like that, probably from 1960 to early 1962, where they were coordinated groups of campus people. Then, what began to happen was, again, some people started dropping out of school and beginning living in the communities, or had finished school, like Bob Moses, and started living in the communities. And there was a whole big debate about whether you continued public accommodations like looking at desegregating theaters, desegregating housing, desegregating lunch counters, or whether you move into the next phase, which was the political phase, deal with voting rights. At the end of the day, people in SNCC decided to go into voting rights. Therefore, with that kind of agenda, the nature of SNCC changed. So, we were no longer just campus organizations where you could, demonstrations all over the place, but you had voting rights in the most dangerous places; Mississippi, Alabama, Southwest Georgia. So, those students... And most people, we were between 17 and 22. Julian, somebody accused Julian of saying, "Well, they were 26 years old." Julian resented that. "No, I was 21, 22 years old." And that is what-

SM (01:05:57):
He is on my Facebook.

CC (01:06:00):
Yeah. So, here is a guy, here you have people, if you try to talk to them about whole groups of fear and communism and all this other baggage, no, they see right and wrong, they see people who are supposed to be voting in the United States cannot vote, they see barriers that exist. Therefore, SNCC came in at the tail end of what I characterize as the legal fight with the NAACP and people like that, brought us Brown v Board and all the issues around that, and all the stuff that King brought in terms of testing the legal things. So, my sense is that the period of beginning to either challenge the law, test the law, really came with the sit-ins and the freedom riots. Then, the political era, I would say SNCC was very much involved in that discussion. Started in (19)62 and probably ended in 2008, where the political barriers, where you no longer had poll tax and educational tests and all that stuff to be become a voter and a citizen in the United States. So, my sense is that SNCC went from a campus organization, particularly dealing with public accommodations and public accommodations issues, to moving to become a centralized organization dealing with voting, voting rights, and political organization. And probably, the two huge things that had big impact because of SNCC, at least on the voter registration side, was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and what it did in the challenge in (19)64, and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. Those two, I think, had profound impact on this country.

SM (01:08:21):
It is interesting, Fannie Lou Hamer... I have a question that I have asked a lot of people. A lot of the reason why the women's movement abound was because of sexism that took place within the anti-war movement, which was really strong. And even, I talked to members of the gay and lesbian group, and they also said it was very prevalent in there. And Civil Rights too. So, when you look at the march on Washington in 1963, we know that Rochelle was involved and Bayard had many young mentees under him and he was delegating them, but obviously, it was not publicized in the media that much, unless you read the bio of Bayard and others. Because when you see all the people in front of the Lincoln Memorial, you see Dorothy Height standing over to the right, and you see Mahalia Jackson singing, but it is all men.

CC (01:09:23):
That is true.

SM (01:09:23):
It is all men. And-

CC (01:09:24):
I think, with the exception of Dorothy Height, there was nobody at the leadership level who was a woman. And she was there and probably there because of Bayard. I think that the involvement of young people... Because the other piece is that some of those guys, particularly Roy Wilkins, did not particularly embrace the involvement of young people either now. So, Roy Wilkins said, "I am not going to have you...," he told me, "I am not going to have your young people come in here and destroy everything we have worked for-for all these years. You will do it over my dead body." So, it seems to me that these guys had built themselves a structure, and were resistant to women, to young people, and other people that they were not "comfortable" with coming into that arena.

SM (01:10:38):
I think Whitney Young was in the same boat.

CC (01:10:40):
Oh, no question. He went into his thing, they would coveralls... Oh, he had a fit. He just could not understand how these young people could be so disrespectful, come into this building that Rockefeller gave them, I think on 48th Street, in coveralls. And do we care about any of that? We did not care.

SM (01:11:04):
The other thing is, James Farmer, who was arrested, I believe, and he was not at the march, he was the one leader that was not there, I believe-

CC (01:11:13):
Yeah. But I think, by that time, Farmer had given it up to what is-his-face, and he was in Black Mind, Louisiana. But he was down in-

SM (01:11:19):
Floyd McKissick?

CC (01:11:19):
Floyd McKissick, right. Yeah-yeah.

SM (01:11:24):
No, he was not resistant though, was he? He is-

CC (01:11:27):
No-no-no. I think Farmer came of the tradition much more like Bayard, being Fellowship of Reconciliation, that kind of stuff. He is much more in that kind of tradition than say Roy Wilkins or Whitney Young, and so forth.

SM (01:11:47):
Some of the transition you are talking about here too, which is really... I have done a lot of reading on Dr. King, and I am really looking forward to the week that is coming because it is long overdue. But one of the things that is interesting, I can remember reading Charles Silverman's book, In Black and White. I was in college, and it was just a tremendous book. And I still, I have got a first edition of it, mint condition. However, my other one's all marked up. But he talked about Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg and the more gradualist approach, again, the Brown v Board of Education, which is so crucial, and then, you saw the resistance that took place right on the part of states to follow the law, and so forth. Then, you have got Dr. King coming along, which is basically, he respected Thurgood Marshall, but he was not a gradualist type of person. He was a guy-who-want-it-now kind of a person, and that is why he was doing the protest. Then, you get the next group, which is the question I want to ask is, did SNCC get into the Black Power issue because Stokely became so unbounded, and they trapped Brown-

CC (01:13:01):
No-no-no.

SM (01:13:03):
No?

CC (01:13:03):
No. I am going to give you a piece that I wrote. I think the Black Power discussion really came after the Atlantic City challenge.

SM (01:13:21):
And that is (19)64?

CC (01:13:24):
(19)64. I think up to 1964, the whole concept of SNCC and everybody else was that if you bring the problems out and you make it part of the conversation of the country, then people will in fact deal with it, and that, in fact, it was that your role was to make this situation known, to deal with, so that these guys who were in the centers of political, economic, cultural, and so forth, power, would do whatever they want, do the right things. One of the things leading up to the, and I will never forget this, one of the things leading up to the (19)64 summer project, I think this was (19)63, there were probably maybe 30, 35 bodies found in the Mississippi River. And it was raised with the people in New York Times, and it was about that much space. Nobody cared.

SM (01:14:59):
More than Emmett Till then?

CC (01:15:01):
Yeah. It was about 36 bodies found and it was not big news. The reason that Emmett Till was big news was because his mother decided to show the absolute brutality, and it shocked the Black community, and they reacted. And that is one of the profound things that affected me. And it affected a number of people who were in SNCC because they were just coming into their teenage years, therefore, they saw a lot of it. I think Emmett Till had a profound effect. But let us go back to this whole transition to Black power. Basically, what people realize at the Freedom Democratic Party is that even if you brought the issues and even if you played by all the rules and even if you were representing people who had been harmed all these years, the interests of the power structure did not care any of them, by the by. So, you see Ms. Hamer making a brilliant speech building sympathy, and Johnson cutting her off. You see that we have 13 votes to make a minority port, and then people, and Diggs and others betraying us and crumbling the thing. You see that in the church in Atlantic City, everybody, I am talking about Joe Raw, I am talking about Walter Luther, I am talking about Martin King, I am talking about Bayard Rustin, I am talking about everybody sided with the discussion of the Democrats must win, and therefore, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party cannot win what they're rightfully there to do. And we are given some fig leave of two things in the balcony. Therefore, the message to the young people, we were saying, okay, you are told, all right, right and wrong if, it is wrong to discriminate, if it is wrong to do this, it is wrong to do that, and you play by the rules and you do the right things, this is supposed to happen. And we saw we were in a right/wrong game, and people were in a win/lose game. So, basically, we now saw what it meant in terms of win/lose. Therefore, people said it is no longer important to ask those who caused the problem to deal with the nature of the problem. We now have to look after ourselves. We now have to think through what we are doing. So, in Lowndes County, which was 80 percent Black, our model was this, we were not going to go and ask the sheriff to do a better job, we were not going to ask the probate judge and a tax collector and a tax assessor. Basically, the concept of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization was regime change. We were going to get rid of every officer who was there. Now, they want to argue, "Well, these people are not qualified. They are sharecroppers, and so forth." What we did was we created comic books that broke the law down, that people could see the law and understand their roles and responsibilities. We had a bunch of things that encourage people to vote. We had the Black Panther as a symbol because we understood that people, the literacy rate was not high. So, basically, we're using what the Indian, Mahatma Gandhi did and other people did, with people who do not have high literacy rates, they vote for a symbol. So, basically, we said, "Pull the lever for the Black Panther across straight party line vote, and then go home. Do not think about this, that or the other. Pull the lever for the Black Panther, and then go home." So, basically, what you had... And we wanted the Black Panther... And basically the Black Panther, the Democratic Party had a rooster as their symbol for the Right. We wanted a strong black symbol, so they got the, I think the panther is the mascot from Morris Brown, or one of those schools in Atlanta. Either Morris Brown or something like that. I think it is Morris Brown. And I think Ruth Howard brought the idea to us, and Jennifer drew it. So, it was a symbol, big, it was black, and we told people, "The whole thing is pull the lever for the Black Panther, and then go home," because basically, that is a strategy that is been tried with high [inaudible]. And our objective was regime change where our view was, if you are going to get rid of police brutality, then you need to be the sheriff. If you are going to get rid of unfair tax practices, then you need to be the sheriff. If you want the federal dollars that come into the county to work in your way, you need to run the county. So, that is basically the basis on which Stokely starts saying, "You cannot ask these people, after what we saw in Atlantic City, to keep doing for you what you need to start doing for yourself." Therefore, the Black people, which is what he would be dealing with in Lowndes County, needed to assume power. And during the Meredith March, that whole discussion was capitalized in the phrase Black Power. Now, I think that in (19)63, King said, that is why you have that money, "I have a dream that is deeply rooted in the American dream." What the younger generation was saying is, "We do not believe that that dream exists for us unless we, in fact, bring it about ourselves, and therefore we have to move for power." Now, you have got to also remember that at that point, and you said you were doing stuff on jazz and arts, and so forth, you have got to remember, and if you look into this whole discussion, at that point we were Negros, Black was a fighting word, we were considered ugly, our features were considered ugly, things that we were not beautiful were us. So, the whole discussion on Black power, at least on the cultural side, had a very profound effect in terms of how Black people saw themselves, because in this sense, in this country, because of what was going on, you had a situation where the closer you were to White, the better you were off, the blacker you were... So, the whole thing about if you are White, you are right, if you light, stick around, and if you're Black, get back. There was just all, just, negativity. So, my sense is that while, in terms of the White community, in terms of the White activist community, there was a sense where you are rejecting us, and on the White community in terms of the power structure, you are challenging us, you are not connected to us. In terms of the Black community, I think at least on the cultural side, it was very profound in terms of changing their sense of themselves. But also, I think, on the political side, it started bringing the Black communities to start thinking about how, within their communities, they take responsibility for their own existence. So, I think that people really do not understand, at least for me, how profound that Atlantic City thing was, because it basically said, even if you play by the rules, you cannot win. There is no such thing as right and wrong, there is only win and lose. It is a power discussion. It is a discussion of who will run and who will control. It is not about good and bad, and wrong, it is about win and lose. That was the message I got. And at 23 years old, it was very interesting to me.

SM (01:25:00):
I know there has been two biographies out on Fannie Lou Hamer, and that convention in (19)64 is mentioned in history books, on Johnson doing what he did, and those kinds of things. I do not think there has been an in-depth-

CC (01:25:15):
You are right.

SM (01:25:16):
... that there has not been an in-depth concentrated, just on that convention, on that movement, on those few days. Someone needs to... I am just bringing this up.

CC (01:25:29):
No-no, I agree with.

SM (01:25:30):
Someone needs to write a book that just needs to cover what happened there, what led up to it, what happened during the days, what followed, the impact it is had on history or why history has not covered it better. And Fannie Lou Hamer has really risen-

CC (01:25:54):
But not only that, not only that. In addition to the Black Power discussion, that convention was responsible for the shift of the Dixie crash of the Republican Party. Basically, there is a straight line from that convention to them shifting to the Republican Party.

SM (01:26:16):
Wow.

CC (01:26:18):
So, I think this is a very big event.

SM (01:26:23):
Fannie Lou Hamer did not live very long, did she? I know she was overweight and she had high blood pressure and-

CC (01:26:31):
She was on a sharecropper, you had been beaten. Other than that, yeah, I do not think she made it to 60.

SM (01:26:38):
Yeah. I think, getting that same timeframe, maybe it is how the media tries to portray things, but there has always been this perception of, well, when Thurgood Marshall did the Brown... the decision came through based on his efforts at the Supreme Court, Dr. King was there to make the comment as the younger person, "Well, the gradualist approach is fine. Congratulations for doing this, but we're doing non-violent protest..."

SM (01:27:03):
Congratulations for doing this, but we're doing nonviolent protest and all the other things. And the Montgomery Bus Boycott was happening and then-

CC (01:27:10):
Yeah, but King did not volunteer. He was drafted now.

SM (01:27:17):
I know. But then you got the picture and the picture I am talking about, the historic picture of Dr. King with his arms crossed and Stokely's talking to him. But basically, it is a picture, it is a scene from, I do not know, they were together on some stage and I think basically, he told Dr. King, your time has passed.

CC (01:27:39):
Well, you know-

SM (01:27:41):
It was referring to Bayard Rustin. He was referring to the big four. He was, your guy's time has passed.

CC (01:27:46):
It's interesting. We, in 1968 and before King, and it must have been two or three months before King died, was killed. Excuse me. He did not died. I mean, well he died as a result of being shot. We had a meeting at the Pismo Hotel here with SNCC people and they wanted to know if we were going to participate in the Poor People's March. And we told him no. Said, are you going to disrupt it? No. He said, are you going to disrupt it? Because the rumors were going to disrupt it. No. Are you going to participate? No. And because we had always been competing, we had always been all this stuff with King. We had a great deal of respect for King, even though we were always in competition with him. And everybody from SNCC was there. Everybody from SCLC was there. And we said to him, you cannot ask those who press you to deal with the nature of your oppression. And King got quiet and we were told after we let got the press, because I mean he understood that the whole thing that he tried, it was going to be a big, big difference. Because King was coming. Because remember after King gave that speech in (19)63 about which everybody celebrates. King gave some hell of a speeches after that about the Vietnam War.

SM (01:29:29):
Oh yeah.

CC (01:29:29):
About poverty. It is like he never gave those speeches. Mean he understood more than most. When you read King stuff, he was a brilliant, brilliant man. And one of the things I do respect, the older I get the more respectful. Philip Randolph, Bayard, Martin King, Thurgood Marshall, I think we brought a lot of energy and we brought a lot of less fear and so forth. And that is what we should bring. Fortunately we had people like Ella Baker who helped us bring perspective, Bayard, who helped bring perspective and so forth. But that is what younger generations do. They go through barriers that people did not think they could go through. And my sense is that as you point out, there is always the transition. We are always going to the next phase. And that is not a bad thing.

SM (01:30:37):
I remember we had Tommy Smith on our campus, and Tommy, when he gave the Black Power fist, Harry Edwards was the graduate student. He was at Cornell too in (19)69, but Tommy and John Carlos, both of them, the perception out there and he's had to repeat it over and over again and correct people. He said, I was never a Black Panther. I was never a Black Panther that was about Black Power. And he, again, he really got upset. And he was like, now remember, if you're writing an article in the paper about this, I was never a Black Panther. I never supported the Black Panthers. I am a Black Power person.

CC (01:31:19):
Well, they do not care that, they just did not want them to quote you. Basically those guys point is that you embarrassed the United States in that because in the world state, because you got to remember in (19)69 and so forth, there was still that Russian United States Cold War discussion. And therefore the United States trying to portray itself as the defender of democracy. And the Russians can show to the world, particularly Africa, that this is not serious. Their salute in Mexico in (19)68 had profound international implications for the United States vis-a-vis the Cold War discussion in Africa. And that is why it seared into this country. And one of the things that now, and I guess I will do some writing at some point pretty soon, but it does seem to me that all this stuff has context. So an event that functions here has layers all over the place. And I think that salute. And so therefore the people who are writing this stuff want to say, you embarrassed us and we will say the most despicable things that we think we can say about you. And that is what it is about.

SM (01:32:50):
And I think Ralph Boston, he did not do the fist, but he did something comparable. He was doing the long jump. And there were many female African American athletes who did the same thing and they concentrated on those two guys.

CC (01:33:06):
Yeah, because remember that was the elite. See 100 and 200. That is the elite. That is the glamour piece. So therefore when you have in the competition of supremacy, use supremacy, my guys are faster than yours, our guys are stronger than yours, all that kind of stuff, boxing was all that. To get those guys and the heavyweights, those the heavyweight boxers to get those guys saying, making their statement at that time was a profound issue. If these guys were 6,000 meat runners, nobody would have cared.

SM (01:33:54):
George Foreman though with the-

CC (01:33:56):
He put the American flag.

SM (01:33:56):
Flag-

CC (01:33:57):
I mean they loved it. They loved it.

SM (01:33:59):
Muhammad Ali was against the war and he paid a heavy price for it. It is interesting. I was up in California and I went to the statue. I had to drive to San Jose because I wanted to see it after Tommy came to our campus. He is a great guy.

CC (01:34:14):
Well yeah, he was.

SM (01:34:15):
Ah Mike, and he is well-educated. Smart as a-

CC (01:34:17):
And not only that, they said in terms of running, he really has some techniques because he broke... you also have to realize that in (19)68, I remember Jim Ryan, I do not know if you remember him.

SM (01:34:33):
Yes, I do.

CC (01:34:35):
Okay.

SM (01:34:35):
Long distance runner.

CC (01:34:35):
A long distance runner, 1500 meters. And I remember I was with my wife in Montreal and remember listening to the announcer say, blacks will win the short distance races because there is no strategy involved, it is just muscle. And where talks about strategy and so forth, whites were going to dominate that. And that was the year Kipchoge Keino came up. I mean-

SM (01:35:06):
Since then-

CC (01:35:07):
Since then, I mean it is Africa, East Africa and East Africa has been dominant. If it is not Somalia, it is Kenya, so forth. Well keep going with your questions cause-

SM (01:35:19):
Yeah, this is a kind of general question here. I did want to mention that something that maybe you did not know the third person, the guy who finished second, Carlos was third.

CC (01:35:31):
Right Carlos was third.

SM (01:35:32):
And he died just before Tommy came to the campus. And I believe Tommy went to his funeral. I forget what country he was from, but did you know that guy supported them a hundred percent?

CC (01:35:45):
Oh yeah.

SM (01:35:45):
And Tommy said, do you want me to raise my fist too? That is not known by a lot of people, but Tommy explains it in the book. They liked that guy, the guy that finished second who was totally in support of what the athletes were doing there. And now he said, no, we have to do this and thanks, but no, do not put your fist up.

CC (01:36:07):
Yeah. Right.

SM (01:36:09):
So when you look at the boomer generation as a whole, and of course boomers are those born between (19)46 and (19)64.

CC (01:36:17):
Yeah (19)65.

SM (01:36:17):
And including all ethnic backgrounds now, all backgrounds. What are your thoughts on that generation? How important were they in the Civil Rights Movement? Because some people are saying, well, they were only 18 or 19 years old when most of the Civil Rights Movement in its heyday was the (19)50s through to maybe (19)65. And so in the boomer generation, they're only coming into, they're going to college starting in (19)65. But they were involved in Freedom Summer, they were involved in a lot of things. But what are your thoughts on this generation now, 70 million strong, that is now reaching the age of 65 this year?

CC (01:36:58):
One of the things that really is interesting, I think the boomer generation helped to change America. And one of the things that is not generally talked about but seen by people like myself is that the boomer generation fed off of a lot of what we did. And what surprised me, if you look at the letter that Clinton wrote to his draft ward where he talked about the Civil Rights Movement, and he did not know what the hell he was ever running. People thought that they were trying to embarrass him by putting out that letter that he wrote. They were profoundly impacted in terms of what we were trying to do. I think, also, that they opened up for people who may not have been boomers, technically, some space, for example, one of the things that you got to remember right after, let us talk about the Black Power thing discussion. Right after that, you had, and coming out of the Civil Rights Movement and literally coming out of it, you had the Cesar Chavez piece, and you're talking about some of the SNCC people going out to help Cesar Chavez. You had Mario Savio who was in fact in Mississippi. You had the whole discussion of the role of women in the movement and in the country where Casey and Mary King and those guys started a whole lot of that conversation and amplifying on it. You had, after the Black Power discussion, you had gray power where a lot of senior citizens started-

SM (01:39:27):
They accused.

CC (01:39:29):
Yeah started talking about that. You had the discussion of gay power. You had a whole sense of, so basically while the boomers may not have been old enough to be in central figures in the Civil Rights Movement, they were the megaphones that had kept, or the mechanism, that kept what the discussion was in the Civil Rights Movement reverberating in a lot of places and a lot of things that kept the society. Because what could have happened was you had a situation where you had that and then things closed up. No-no. They not only did it, but expanded in terms of the view of even stuff like [inaudible] giving him space or Richard Pryor giving him space. So my sense is, one of the things that I said about the Black Power discussion, at least in the black community, the cultural boundaries were broken in terms of poetry, in terms of music, in terms of art, all that stuff were there. And I think in terms of the boomer generation, the boundaries were broken. The kind of industrial Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet-

SM (01:41:12):
Leave it to Beaver.

CC (01:41:13):
Leave It to Beaver. All of that stuff started and the (19)60s and late (19)60s and not only that, the other thing that started, and you see it right now with this little stuff you have here. You got to remember in the (19)50s coming out of Civil Rights Movement, you had two or three magazines. You had, Look, you had Life, you had Time. Those were the big dominant things. We had big dominant things. And then people started beginning to diversify. I think what the Boomer generation brought was a sense of diversity in terms of interest. You did not have to fit into a mold in order to be accepted. You did not have to look like this and act like this and be this. Because what happened, it was order in the (19)50s. What you had in the (19)60s was the breaking down of the disorder, particularly in the black community. But then that the breaking down of that order in terms of the hierarchical stuff. So now Look and Life does not exist anymore. People have a thousand magazines. I think what the boomer generation brought to this situation was diversity and the ability for America to be able to have to accept Mao's A Thousand Flowers so that black people could be this, that or the other. They did not have to be in this box. People who were gay did not have to be in that box. Women did not have to be in their place. People who are geeks are now accepted. That is another group that quote been viewed as such and such. So I am saying that I think probably the hallmark of the boomer generation and what is their ability to accept diversity. Now the other thing is that they have things that allow them to facilitate. We were talking about Facebook, we were talking about... Things are not always in the (19)50s when we were coming along in the early (19)60s, it was always from the top down. Now a lot of it comes from the bottom up because people with blogs, people with this, that and the other can communicate to each other that they do not have to watch ABC, CBS TV in order to get the impressions. There are a lot of people who were making other pressures outside of the hierarchy. So the boomer generation disintegrated the hierarchical structure that existed, that was brought to us by guess by the industrial age.

SM (01:44:33):
You hit it right on the target there. It is almost as if when we discussed the culture wars that we have seen since the (19)80s, (19)90s or whatever, and particularly today, it is trying to change the culture, possibly trying to get it back to the way it was. And actually I am really studying what is going on in England right now. And I think the undercurrent in England, there is a bunch of hooligans and taking advantage of things and copycats, yes. But I think this is a deep-seated problem. This has to do with as Dr. King would always say, we got to deal with the economy because it's not always, it is race, but it is also about your economic status. And I think what is happening in London today and what is happening all over England is the fact that the challenge to multiculturalism, and when I see people who start pointing fingers at the reason why we have problems is because of them. It is because it is a reaction. It is very reactionary and it is scary to me. And that is what the culture wars are.

CC (01:45:49):
Well I think also with the guy in Norway, his view was we are going to kill anybody who supports this kind of stuff. So that is my sense. But I think that the next phase, I think big phase we have to fight is the economic discussion. And that is going to be, a lot of it now centers on education. I think that is the next big Civil Rights fight. Where I think we have finished, my view is that we are finished with the political, the vote and so forth. We are going to have counteractions in terms of the Republicans trying to narrow the vote, trying to talk about frauds and cheating and stuff. But with Obama, there is a sense that that last barrier as President is broken. Because when I was coming up, the view of a black man being president was probably one of the for taken absurdities. Now, I think the whole question of who is able to participate in the economy, which is the issue that you talked about in England and other places, who is going to be able to participate in the economy? Do you have such a hierarchical piece where 1 percent of the highest income people all have as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent? How do you now begin to, given the diversity I just talked about and intellectual property becoming the raw materials of driving the economic engine, how do you now and particularly the sciences, how do you now deal with new literacies? How do you begin to deal with math and science? How do you now begin to think through the use of computer literacy? How do you now begin to, this is the new struggle. How do you now, the economic struggle, which has always been the struggle. Not all this other stuff is race and gender and so forth, the real core issue. Because African-Americans not here in the United States, not because white people did not like them, they were economic implements. They were in agriculture and agrarian economy. They were economic units needed for labor and therefore that is why they're here. And the issues that we have, have not reached beyond that. We have not dealt with the economic issues. And we are now given all these other layers, the legal layer, the segregation layer, the political layer. Now we now have to focus on the economic issues.

SM (01:49:06):
And it is interesting because this is a time when labor unions are going down.

CC (01:49:10):
Oh, they are going down.

SM (01:49:12):
And I can remember being in California before I moved back east and we were told where I worked, if you were ever to talk to anybody, a union, we would fire you. We met as a group over in Daley City just to hear someone talk to this whole group of people. And we did not know we were being spied on.

CC (01:49:39):
But here is the thing, labor unions are going down for two kind of reasons. Two or three reasons. But you got to remember, for example, the labor unions come out of the industrial kinds of things or government. Now Google basically what they have, you go out there and see their campus and all that. They get these kids and these young people and they create a different environment. Facebook, all this stuff where the new industries are. It is a whole different reality. So the same diversity that destroyed the look and the life and so forth is the same diversity that also mitigated the influence of the unions. Right now you and I do consulting. Right now. All I need is a computer and a cell phone and I have a laptop or I right now it is getting down to where all you need is a iPad and you can be anywhere and be your office. It is a whole different work environment. And so unions are going to have a tough time if they do not think through different models of what's going to go on.

SM (01:51:10):
When we are getting down there. We are going on to my next tape here in a second here. But when you look at the presidents, during the time that boomers have been alive, we are talking about Truman through Obama or basically in your lifetime, who are the presidents that, I think the word I want to use is genuine, who generally they may have passed legislation that helped people of color and African Americans. But in your studies, in your life experiences, you worked for President Clinton, but you have seen all these presidents in your life. Who are the genuine ones and who were the fakes?

CC (01:51:58):
In terms of the issues like-

SM (01:51:59):
In terms of caring about people who are having a harder time in this society?

CC (01:52:07):
Well, I think it is interesting. I think probably if you talk to black businessmen and people in that group of people, the president that they think was most helpful to them is Richard Nixon. Because remember Nixon was the one, remember Nixon came in after the riots, the rebellions and Nixon's statement was, what we are going to do is make all these guys entrepreneurs. And he opened up at Commerce through secretary Stands, Sue secretary Stands a minority business development agent was called OBME, Office of Business Minority Enterprise or something like that. Basically Nixon truly believed that the path to salvation was to create businesses that would do that. So he believed in that. I think the other person I think who was familiar and on the voting rights piece and so forth, I would say Johnson was on the voting rights piece. I think he was particularly helpful and he knew the passing of voter rights legislation and so forth. He knew that it would have a huge impact on the Democratic Party in terms of what would happen to it, particularly the Dixiecrats. So he put skin in the game and at the end of the day, while I disagree with him on the war and so forth, I think that on this issue mean he was very important, given as much as presidents can be important. I think the other one who had a profound impact I think was Clinton. And I think Clinton's contribution was his point was, I am going to have a cabinet that looks like America. And so therefore Clinton had somebody in a lot of positions of authority and power that they were not, including Department of Agriculture. He had Espy there, Commerce, he obviously Ron Brown. So it was no longer if you had a black, you put them at HUD. It was no longer the Weaver Pat Harris discussion. Almost any position in the thing you can have, there have only two positions I guess blacks have not really been cabinet secretaries, that is Treasury and Defense. But if somebody nominates a black person for a position, George Bush did for Secretary of State. It's no longer a big issue. So I think the three presidents that probably on the issue that, Nixon on business, Johnson on voting rights, and Clinton, on having a sense that this country needs to diversify in terms of its cabinet. One of the things that when I was at Commerce with Ron Brown, we went to a meeting, Brown called a meeting of the senior staff and they were all white males. So Ron walked in there and said, I do-

CC (01:56:03):
Ron walked in there and said, "I do not ever want to sit in a meeting that looks like this again." Let me tell you, bells went off. I mean they would ... But the other thing that ... And Ron was good, because I mean, he was very aggressive in terms of promoting American businesses abroad. I mean, the Republicans loved him, because he would be able to open up to Africa, to China, to wherever he went. He was that good in that sense. And he was a fighter in the sense that when Gingrich and them wanted to downsize the commerce, housing, and get rid of education, he fought them tooth and nail. Cisneros gave in, but Ron fought them tooth and nail. And all these guys who were SESs, the top of the food chain who had no respect for Black people before Ron came in, grew to love Ron because he saved their jobs.

SM (01:57:16):
Wow.

CC (01:57:17):
So my sense is, I think that the three presidents, I would say Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton, those were the three.

SM (01:57:31):
You talked about the (19)64 convention, but how about the (19)68 convention? Because the one in Chicago that was on TV-

CC (01:57:39):
Oh, the Vietnam allotment.

SM (01:57:40):
Yeah, and the year 1968, the loss of-

CC (01:57:44):
Was quite a year. But I think that year spoke a lot to diversifying. I mean, you began to see the coming apart. I mean, when I listened to Pat Buchanan, I do not know if you ever see him on Morning Joe and stuff like that.

SM (01:58:04):
No.

CC (01:58:05):
I mean, they want to go back to the (19)50s. I mean, basically (19)68 was the continuation of creating diversity, creating a sense of, we all need ... Now, I mean, because we do not need to be a Vietnam. We do not want to be drafted to fight wars that we do not want to fight. Ultimately now what they have done is gotten rid of the draft and mechanized now with drones, and now the people who are poor are fighting. So, I mean, I am not sure the outcomes of (19)68 what everybody wanted it, so they ended the draft. But now people are now forced who are poor. They got no place else to do. But God, when you look at all those deaths, notices, they're either from towns, not in the big cities, and they're all poor people. They are all poor people. And now you also got a lot more mercenaries. I mean, that is, I think what-

SM (01:59:13):
I only got about four more questions here.

CC (01:59:17):
Okay, because I got 10 more minutes.

SM (01:59:18):
Okay. I am trying to remember. It was the (19)68 convention. Oh, my God, I am forgetting what I was going to ask. Had to do with the ... Oh, the psyche. The boomer generation was made up of 70 million people.

CC (01:59:34):
Right.

SM (01:59:37):
And that year was unbelievable in so many ways. It was so tragic. And what happens is when you look at the (19)60s and the (19)70s and the boomer generation, they talk about that really 95 percent were really uninvolved in anything and they were going on with their daily lives and everything.

CC (01:59:53):
That is true.

SM (01:59:56):
Only 5 percent were really involved in any kind of an activism of any kind, including conservatives too, those conservatives. But I have always felt deep down inside that that year, subconsciously along with what happened in (19)63, subconsciously left a permanent mark on all. For the generation to see two major figures assassinated, to see ... The war in Vietnam was, we were supposed to be in control, and then Tet happened. We saw the conventions with politicians pointing and swearing at each other. And then there is so many worries in the city. It is just a terrible time.

CC (02:00:42):
No, I agree with you. See, I think it is, I mean, I would not say "a terrible year." I'd say clearly a year of transition.

SM (02:00:49):
Can you hold- You were [inaudible]

CC (02:01:00):
I think those people who say that basic 5 percent of activists, probably correct, because I think change is never brought about, it is never a mass movement. I think, however, however, just like I was saying at Howard and just like I was saying at varied people, that the people who were not activists but are more passive, tend to look at what's going on and decide who they're going to support in terms of who they will be supportive of. And I think that for a lot of people in America, they were comfortable with the changes, but were made to be afraid of them. I mean, part of the reason that you have ... And disorder is part of the reason you had Nixon. But it does seem to me that ... I think that for a lot of the boomers and for the younger ones, this was where things were going. They were being empowered. For a lot of those who were older at the time, the country was going to hell in a hand basket, and they did not know what to do. Things were moving too fast. How could this happen? So I mean, my sense is that, yeah, I mean, (19)68 was a very profound year. But I think that while it was a profound year, probably only 5 percent of the people really made it a profound year.

SM (02:02:49):
In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and end, and what was a watershed moment?

CC (02:02:57):
For me, I mean, I think watershed moment, there's several watershed moments in the (19)60s. The Freedom Rides and the sit-ins were watershed moments. The Cuban Missile Crisis, watershed moment. We became aware of the threat of nuclear warfare in a way that we did not really ... I mean for me, I was in school and I was ... (19)63, a watershed moment. As I said earlier, (19)64, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a watershed moment. For me also, (19)67 was a watershed moment, I mean just personally, because (19)67, I went to what was considered a war crimes tribunal convened by Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre.

SM (02:03:58):
Wow.

CC (02:03:58):
I participated in that and understood what was going on. Obviously, as we said, (19)68 was another watershed. So there were several. I mean, the Freedom Rides and the sit-ins began to break down the old order, or challenge the old order that was broken down in (19)54. (19)62, everybody was scared shitless because of thermonuclear warfare. (19)63, how could this happen in America? I think those were the times that made a difference.

SM (02:04:47):
Was Kent State in there too?

CC (02:04:52):
I would say Kent State. I would say Jackson. I would say Jackson State, all that stuff that happened on the campus. I mean, all of it was very ... I mean, the (19)60s were very intense because, I mean, a new order was being established, and as that new order was established, you had some disorder.

SM (02:05:20):
Just a little question, and that is not about Black power, but about the Black Panthers. Some people say when we talk about violence, there was a weather underground. The anti-war movement was not violent because they were very frustrated. Some people say that the Black Panthers, even though they had the food program, that they were violent in their-

CC (02:05:41):
Right. I mean, their argument is that they were self-defense. You know, first of all, I do not know much about the Black Panthers. My sense is they were ... I think it is SNCC. I mean, I think part of the Panthers that felt the need to relate to the community that they were in and move with them to make change was probably the part that I am most sympathetic to. I think the part that felt the need to show machismo and so forth and audacity and the name-calling and so forth, while I think it was all right, I mean, I guess for young people to feel that that was doing something, the older I get, my sense is that it was not a big change. I mean, my sense is, look, the older I get, the more I understand is, that revolution really is the people who you involve in the discussion. It is not guns. I mean, guns will become a reaction, but at the end of the day, basically when you look at the history of revolution, especially our armed violence and so forth, after one side wins or the other, it is always a then what? And generally when one side wins an armed struggle, it is a continuation of the same, because the people who were excluded before are still excluded now. So my sense is that the big fight is, how do you include those who are excluded, and how you bring them into the discussion and conversation where they can find their own voice? I mean, I think that is long term. That is very tough. And so I mean, I think to the terms of question of the Panthers, to the extent that they involved themselves in the urban communities, that is probably a good thing. But I think the kind of leading with your frustration led to a certain kind of violence, and that violence was felt mostly in the Black community with the killing of each other and all that kind of retribution and foolishness. I mean-

SM (02:08:42):
I know in California they surrounded the capital in Sacramento.

CC (02:08:46):
Yeah, I saw that, but at the end of the day, that was nice and a good picture. But probably, at the end of the day, they probably shot more of their own people than they did other than that.

SM (02:08:58):
And then of course, something that was not related to it was the guns at Cornell University in (19)69. The organizer was Harry Edwards, and-

CC (02:09:11):
Yeah, I mean, but it is all theater. I mean, to me, that is all theater. It's nice. I mean, the same way I view Cornel West. He is all theater.

SM (02:09:18):
Two more questions, and this is a very important one because I have asked it to everybody. This was a question that we asked Senator Edmund Muskie in 1995 when we took a group of students to Washington. And they came up with a question because they had seen videos of the 1968 year as a whole. And the question was this, "Due to the divisions that were taking place in the 1960s and the early (19)70s between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who were for the war, or those who were against the war, or for the troops, against the troops, whether ... Will the boomer generation of 70 million go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healed?" And is healing even an issue here? The Vietnam Memorial was built obviously to try to heal some of the veterans and their families. It was a non-political statement. It was geared toward the vets. But even Jan Scruggs in his book, To Heal A Nation, says that he hopes it goes beyond the vets, that it plays a little part in healing the nation. Do you think it's possible to heal from these divisions?

CC (02:10:27):
Oh, yeah. I mean, oh, yeah. My sense is this. I mean, I am going to go back to what I said earlier. The Civil War, you had two sides. I mean, you had the industrial north conquering the agrarian south and replacing one economic system with the other, and people were locked in, and the whole bunch of stuff that happened where the north brought the Black community in to solidify their power. I mean, so they never got over it. I mean, I am not sure they are over it yet. But I think in terms of the generation, the boomer generation, if you can isolate them out and the people who were activists and so forth, I do not have a sense that ... I mean, I think, as I said earlier, that what the boomer generation is going to be noted for is that it created space for many. And so therefore, the creating of space for Blacks, [inaudible] for gays, women, this, that, the other, I mean, people have this space. I mean, it was not necessarily ... The boomer generation did not so much create. There was a lot of conflict, but it was not a zero-sum game, which the Civil War was. I win, you lose. The boomer generation, I think, created a possibility where you had multiple winners, and I think that is ... I mean, I may hear, some would say, "Well, people thought before Black power was the good part of the civil rights movement and after that was the bad part." Or, women and men, I do not see them going after each other. I mean, I do not see gays and straights. I mean, I do not see ... I think, well, let us take for the gay community. I mean, you now have in several places. You are not going to have it in Alabama anytime soon, or some places there. But at least Perry, even in his ignorance, had to say, "Well, if the people in New York want it, let them have it." And my sense is that space is being created. I mean, even those who say, "Well, there's no place in the United States for this kind of activity," they're not the dominant discussion. People view as, "Hey, if the people in the state want to ..." I mean, and so forth. Or while he had this whole thing about Obama, whether he is legitimate, whether he was born in the United States, now he's being treated like every other president. Why are not you saving me, you dumb son of a bitch? I am just saying to you that, I mean, I do not think that the boomer generation and the actions that were going on and that created a zero-sum game. They created more space for more people, and therefore the diversity allowed various people in various ways to coexist. I mean, I do not have that view.

SM (02:14:32):
My last question deals a little bit about legacy. If you could put it in just a nutshell here, how did your experiences at Howard, your experiences with SNCC, even your relationship with Mr. Rustin and CORE, the experience of being one of the main young leaders of the March on Washington in 1963, how have these played a part in your life post-(19)60s and (19)70s? Because I know that you have been involved in many leadership roles. You still are.

CC (02:15:15):
Right.

SM (02:15:15):
I have read your background and one thing that always sticks out is that you seem to be a person that always wants to help people who really need help.

CC (02:15:29):
Well, if I-

SM (02:15:30):
You stand out there.

CC (02:15:31):
Yeah. Well, my sense is this. Here is my view. I think my worldview has been defined by the things that you talked about, and it was interesting. I was active for a long time and then I was not active, and now I am beginning to think about these issues again. And it seems to me that my view at 22, 23 is still my view today, my worldview today. I am surprised at ... I mean, I have refined it in terms of historical context, influence of more information. But my sense is that, you try to work with the people who have problems and get them to have their own voice about what is to be done. I am now more convinced ... Probably the big change, I mean, I am more convinced that probably if you want revolution, nonviolence is important in that in the sense that it is not important ... I mean, you do not make change by shooting the people who are in power. You make change by making sure that those who are powerless are empowered. I mean, I think that is the big thing in my mind. I also think that time and energy is more important than money. I also think that it is also important to be an actor and not a reactor. I think that change and diversity are important, and even if that the world is much better being diverse than it is being one color, or being Black and white in the sense that ... So, I mean, those are the things that ... I also think that war has no use, because basically it's fought for the interest of the economically powerful, and poor people are the ones who fight the wars, die, and get nothing from it. Those are the things that ... I have not changed my views on any of that.

SM (02:18:13):
Those are prophetic. You have made some very prophetic things, that you need to put these into a book.

CC (02:18:24):
Thank you.

SM (02:18:26):
Because I think that good young scholars and students and...

CC (02:18:29):
Yeah. No, I am going to start writing. I mean, people have said I need to start writing and I need to start doing that. I mean, I am going to probably just do ... I will get there. I will get there.

SM (02:18:48):
I guess the last thing is, I think you have already said it, what do you think your lasting legacy is when people ... You are going to live another 50 years, right?

CC (02:18:58):
Right, whatever.

SM (02:18:59):
Well, what will people say when they think of Courtland? And secondly, the legacy of the civil rights movement and the legacy of the boomer generation, because they are in [inaudible]

CC (02:19:11):
I think the legacy of the civil rights movement is that it broke down barriers that were assumed in the United States. That is going to be the importance of that, the racial barriers. I think the second part of that is that it empowered the boomer generation in terms of music, in terms of lifestyle, in terms of various kinds of things. I mean, it was the inspiration for the boomer generation. I think for the boomer generation, as I said earlier, it created space and diversity for Americans to live in, and they did not have to be in Black and white. They could be in whatever colors they wanted to be. I do not know if you saw that movie where it was Black and white, and I mean, the diversity gave the sense of life and explored it. I mean, and I think that it also brought technologies into the conversation that helped give power to more and more people. I am talking about communications or whatever. I mean, just both with the computer and the cell phone. They made a huge difference. And in terms of, I mean, I do not disagree with what King said the night before he was killed, "Tell them I tried to help somebody." I mean, do not tell them this, that, because material things at the end of the day, I mean, as you know, I am not a person who believes in poverty. I would let you know that right away. But I do not believe that it is what it's about. I believe that working to help people and to broaden the base of democracy is probably the important thing.

SM (02:21:33):
Is there any final comments you want to state, or-

CC (02:21:35):
No-no, I am good.

SM (02:21:37):
Any questions you thought I was going to ask? Or-

CC (02:21:40):
No-no. I got to get out of here.

SM (02:21:41):
I got to take three or four more pictures of you.

CC (02:21:43):
Okay. Okay.

SM (02:21:44):
I guess we will do it this way.

CC (02:21:45):
Okay.

SM (02:21:47):
I guess with your glasses off.

CC (02:21:50):
Okay. All righty.

SM (02:21:52):
Okay. Reset one.

CC (02:21:53):
Mm-hmm.

SM (02:21:57):
Reset two. And that picture in the background looks great. There we go. Ready, set, three. And last but not least, I will do one with grip here. Ready, set, four. That is it.

CC (02:22:16):
Okay, good.

SM (02:22:17):
Good.

CC (02:22:18):
All right. You got a cab up here?

SM (02:22:20):
No, I drove my car.

CC (02:22:21):
Oh, you drove here.

SM (02:22:22):
Yeah.

CC (02:22:22):
I did not see a car.

SM (02:22:23):
Yeah. I will just take this in the next room.

CC (02:22:29):
Okay.

SM (02:22:29):
Thank you very much for spending the time with me.

CC (02:22:33):
No problem. I have a 6:30 appointment downtown.

SM (02:22:35):
Oh, whoa.

CC (02:22:38):
Yeah, I told them that.

SM (02:22:38):
Let me get my stuff out of here. 30.

(End of Interview)

2011-08-11

Stephen McKiernan

Courtland Cox, 1941-

142:55

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

Political activists--United States; Cox, Courtland, 1941--Interviews

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