>> I think.
>> So I'm here today with Dr. Gwendolyn Middlebrooks,
a veteran of the Atlanta Student Movement
and a professor at Spelman College.
And we're talking about the Atlanta Student Movement.
So just to start,
just tell me a little bit about you. Where were you born?
>> Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Moved to Atlanta when I was nine years old.
I was in fourth grade.
We came to Atlanta. I was in tears.
My mother said we were moving to
Atlanta because they had colleges down there.
We could go to college. So I
came to Atlanta to go to college.
>> Where did you go to school
when you were here in Atlanta?
>> I attended David T. Howard High
School after elementary school at C.W.
Hill and then Spelman College for many years.
But when I first started coming,
I thought college was free.
I was surprised when I found out you had to pay.
I thought you just went to elementary high school,
we went to college.
>> Your parents or maybe your grandparents,
when they moved down here, they moved down
here specifically so you could go to college.
So were they an influence on
you in terms of your activism?
>> I think so. My parents,
we have rules in our house.
You didn't go to restaurants
where you had to go to the back door.
You didn't go to movies and other places that
didn't admit you like they did
people of other races and cultures.
And it was very interesting how they
protected us because during
those days, we didn't have malls.
And I never went shopping alone.
And that was my mother's way of protecting us.
If you need shoes, your mother
went with you to get the shoes.
You just didn't browse around town looking for things.
Downtown Atlanta was where all the stores were located.
And so my mother would say,
use the bathroom before you leave home.
Get water before you leave home,
because she wanted us to stay away from
the water fountains that said colored in white.
And the bathrooms that said colored in white.
She told me later that
the bathrooms for colored people normally weren't clean.
So whenever we had to get
something from the downtown area,
something had to be purchased.
We went with my mother. We got it and we came back home.
That was a way of protecting us from
the bad feelings of
who we were and
how people treated us based on who we were.
>> And it sounds like it was
her way of being an activist.
>> I think so. Our world
was pretty small when I look at it.
When you live in segregation, you don't have cars,
you move about in your community, in your schools.
And so you don't get a chance to go in
areas where people might
call you names and might mistreat you.
We didn't ride the buses to different places.
We went to school, went to church,
went to the YMCA on Butler Street,
and the movie theater there and back home, that was it.
>> So you and I have
talked before about the Atlanta Student Movement,
and so we start our timeline in 1960,
which is when the spring of that year
when everything started really to happen.
And you were a junior at Spelman in 1960.
>> That's right.
>> And that's when you got involved with Lonnie King,
Julian Bond, and Student Movement.
>> That's right.
>> How did that happen?
>> I knew Lonnie from high school.
Lonnie was in the 12th grade,
and he ran for
student government president against Vernon Jordan.
And we gained a lot of respect for him.
We were in the eighth grade. We were eighth graders,
and Vernon, both of them were attractive young men.
But Vernon spent all his time talking to the seniors.
Lonnie talked to the eighth graders.
Well, everybody knows there are
more eighth graders than there are seniors.
And so when we voted,
we all voted for Lonnie.
So I knew him, had a lot of respect for him.
He also went to Ebenezer Baptist Church,
and that was the church I attended.
So though I wasn't in his social group,
he was older. I knew him.
And I knew of some of the things he had done.
And I can also say I had an uncle.
Lonnie didn't look like my uncle,
but my uncle graduated from Morehouse College.
That was my mother's brother.
And my uncle was a student at Morehouse.
When my grandfather, his father was killed in
the worst train wreck in
the history of Georgia, it still is.
The Royal Palm collided head on with
the train that was moving in opposite direction.
One was going North and Ponce de Leon
and the Royal Palm were the trains.
But I think about that because my uncle talked about
that situation and how his sense of
pride as a person of color had saved his life.
He and his friends got on the train and he could
ride free because my grandfather
worked in the dining car.
And he said he had
thought about not going home for Christmas,
but he could get a free ride.
So when the train came from Florida,
stopped in Atlanta, he
decided he'd get on the train and go home.
And the train work occurred two days before Christmas.
And he and his friends went to the dining hall
where my grandfather worked to eat.
Because people who worked for
the train could have family members eat,
even though they were people of color in the dining car.
And when they sat at a round table in the corner,
he said, the head waiter
was going to pull a curtain around him.
And they said, why do you have to pull the curtain?
They said, because of Plessy versus Ferguson,
they had to separate them.
They said, you're permitted to stay here,
but we have to pull the curtain around.
So he and his friends decided that rather than sit there,
they would refuse to eat and they got up to leave.
My grandfather, he said,
had the cook make sandwiches
for them and put them in paper bags,
and they were sitting at the end of the train in a car,
eating those sandwiches out of
those paper bags when there
was a head on collision and
everybody in the dining car was killed.
Everybody in the dining car and everybody
in the first day cars were killed.
During that time, you had the engine, the coal car,
the luggage car, and then
the dining car and the day
cars were filled with white passengers.
All of the deaths on
the train occurred with the white passengers,
and that was the train wreck that started
the train companies running North and South,
putting black people in
the front cars and
white people and the dining car in the rear.
That particular. But he
told that story and he talked about
how his pride and how
his feelings about himself as
a person had saved his life.
He started telling that story when I was very young.
He was a graduate of Morehouse.
And I remembered it that having some sense of self who
you are and some pride
about yourself really was very important.
And I saw that in Lonnie.
I looked at him, how proud he was,
what he was trying to do.
And I could relate it to hearing that story. I grew up.
My grandmother would tell us my grandmother had
free passage always on
the train because her husband
had been killed on the train.
And whenever we would
start toward the train and give the man,
she would give the man our tickets.
She would have my sister by one hand and me by the other.
She would say, come on,
they're putting us up front in
harm's way because they had
changed and put the Negroes or
the colored people up front
and the white people in the back.
Well, my uncle always talked
about having pride and understanding
who you were and thinking something of
yourself early before situations occur.
And so when Lonnie approached me, I knew him.
I tell people I wasn't following a person I didn't know.
He was not a personal friend at that time.
We've gone closer as the years have passed.
But when he approached me about helping out.
I said, of course, I'd be glad to follow him because I
thought he was a person who
stood for a lot of good things.
He was very principle, and
he respected himself and other people.
So in March 15th, actually, of 1960,
you were one of 14 spelling students
who protested public cafeterias around Atlanta.
And this was one of
the first student-led sit-ins in the city,
and I'm just hoping you might be
able to talk to us a little bit about that.
I think you sat in at the state capitol-
>> That's right.
>> Cafeteria.
>> That's right. And Otis Moss
was in charge of our group.
I have to say I tease them now
because the men were in charge of everything.
During those days, it was
important for the men to be upfront.
So as women libbers now,
we moved to the front also,
but we were proud to stand behind the men.
So Otis Moss was in charge of our group.
And when we assembled that morning on the campus of
Atlanta University to disperse the different cafeterias,
we weren't told the night before where we were going.
We weren't even told that day.
When I got in the car,
to be with the group headed by Otis Moss Jr,
I had no idea where we were going.
And of course, we didn't have cell phones in those days.
People were using walking talkies.
But all I knew was I was with this group,
and there were so many cars that
were going to the state capitol.
And we were told the night before and reminded that day,
we were told the night before clothing we should wear.
We were not to wear tennis shoes and
blue jeans during those days were
considered very casual picnic football sports or fashion.
You didn't wear them for high fashion in those days.
So we were told not to wear blue jeans and not to
wear tennis shoes to dress because it was
felt if we wore business casual or Sunday clothing,
we would be treated better.
We didn't know how we might be treated.
We wanted people to
respect us and we thought we looked nice.
In nice clothing, people would treat us better.
So we were given all that information.
We were told not to laugh.
Not to tease. It was a serious situation.
And to bring a tote bag with toilet articles
because you might be arrested
and any personal things you might need,
they might not provide for you in jail.
So everybody had a tote bag.
The information was very clear.
I was very proud of the leadership of the students
because it showed they have
really given a lot of thought to what was happening.
But anyway, I was in the car
with the people going to the state capitol and didn't
find out until we reached
that destination that that's where we were going to be.
And I think that was good because people would have
alerted the police and
other folk about what was going on.
So they didn't tell anybody.
>> So I've been reading this book by Professor Lefever,
who was a professor at Spelman
who wrote Undaunted by the Fight.
And you have an amazing quote in this book,
and I just wanted to ask you to reflect on it.
And it's from that day,
when you were at
the lunch counter in the basement of the state capitol.
And you said, I can explain
the expressions on the faces of
the Negro people who were
working behind the cafeteria counter.
When we walked into that room,
it was like we had brought light into their lives.
They began to beckon us to come faster down the line.
They need didn't ask us what we wanted.
They just started putting everything
they could find on our trays.
They were so proud of us.
We knew immediately we were doing something
that they felt they had not been able to do.
>> That's right. When we walked in there, now, remember,
the plan was to go to the restaurants,
but we assumed we were
going to be arrested when we walked in the door.
So that was no plan for what
you were to do if you got the food.
That was interesting.
So when we walked into that restaurant,
there was one white lady at the cash register.
But she was counting the money. You could hear the coins.
And there was no one in there.
There were no other customers.
We walked in there. The place was empty.
And the food was out.
There were two or three black ladies behind the counter.
And we just stood there because we
assumed we walked in the door,
they were going to arrest us, but they
didn't. Nobody knew we were there.
So they started doing this, telling us to come in.
And when we got over, we were trying
to look and decide what we wanted.
So they just started shoving
the food for us to put on our trays,
very helpful and looking at
her and shoving the food toward us.
I have no idea what I put on my tray.
It was some food item.
But we went down the counter to the cash register.
The first person actually paid.
He was a gentleman and he was an albino,
and his hand was very fair and in color.
And he gave her the money, and she took it.
She never looked up at anybody's faces.
And when the next person who was a young lady
extended her hand and she saw the dark color,
she screamed, jumped off the stool and
started throwing her arms up
in the air, screaming, they're here.
Lock the door. Don't let them out.
That was strange.
It was like we were something to be feared.
She was just flailing her arms.
She was really upset.
And so we walked away from
the counter and sat down. We sat there a long time.
Finally, Reverend Moss says,
well, let's eat.
This may be the last meal we get today.
Because nobody had told
us we would eat if we got the food.
It was very interesting
that we got food and had planned to.
So it was a very interesting feeling,
though, to sit there,
the wall of the cafeteria.
The wall dividing us from
the hallway was completely glass.
And to watch those people walk by and look at us,
looking at us, I kept thinking,
this is the way animals feel in the zoo.
People are just walking by and looking.
They were walking by and looking.
Of course, the sit-ins
were happening all over the city and
they knew what they were trying to
decide what they were going to do.
But we were watching people watch us,
after we finished eating
because we were told not to talk.
This was very serious. And we were very serious.
And so what we did was watch people
watch us until they decided they were going to arrest us.
And we had been told it was also
a plan to line up a male or female,
because the leaders and planners
knew they weren't going to put one person in
a police car at a time and they didn't want a woman
or the ladies to be in the police cars without men.
So if we alternated male, female,
that would assure that
no two females would be in a police car alone.
So I moved into a female.
I moved into the car rather
and I was the first female in that car.
And when I sensed somebody was coming behind me,
I looked back, it was Otis Moss.
He and I were two in the police car together.
And I think from that group,
they only put two people in a car together,
and there were two police officers
in that particular car talking.
They were talking to each other. They didn't
say very much to us,
and they were talking
to other police officers on the walkie-talkies.
And finally, at some point,
Otis reached in his coat pocket.
I saw him and pulled out a Bible and
started reading the 23rd song.
I never shall forget that. And when he did,
they stopped talking, and they never talked again.
They stopped talking. So I
thought that was very polite of them.
They stopped talking while you read the 23rd song,
and they never spoke to each other again.
So we rode around the block,
I don't know how long,
until they decided that they were going to arrest us.
I guess they made a decision to somebody.
And we all ended up down
at the jail together in a big holding cell.
It was a big holding cell that day.
And it was good to see other people down there.
I think it was comforting.
Numbers made us feel comfortable.
>> So I actually have a copy of a photo from I guess,
where you all were sitting in that cell.
>> This was what? This is good.
>> And so I know you're there and Marian Wright is there.
And I don't know who the other two people are.
>> I don't know who they are,
but you can see we were serious.
We were told to bring out books and study
and do things that were consistent.
We were spared, of course, needed to study because we
were spending time out of class.
This is very good.
And you won't see any pictures of us laughing and joking.
Normally, they are very serious pictures.
So the preparation was just excellent for
the young people who were in charge of
the entire organization and management of it.
And we were willing to do what we were told to do,
to make sure the entire project was a success and it was.
If I learned anything during those days,
it was the power of unity.
What you can do if you stick together for
the right reasons and if
leadership is good and you talk about the right,
we had regard,
I regard for everybody.
And that was very important,
what we could do peacefully in a very
quiet, positive, respectful manner.
You just touched the hearts, souls,
and minds of a lot of people,
and it was really wonderful to be a part of it.
I can't think of anybody who was out of sorts or running
around and doing things that were
inappropriate because we knew
if one person got out of line,
it affected the image of the entire effort,
and we had to be together.
People, of course,
everywhere regardless if you were a person of color,
felt the pain of segregation.
That was a common problem that we
had regardless of socioeconomic status.
>> It was a daily humiliation.
>> It was.
>> When you talk about not
being able to go into a restaurant,
having to go to the back door and get your meal
to go and then not even
being able to go in the front door of the restaurant.
>> But you see you avoid
that humiliation if you don't go.
My mother refused.
My parents refused to
have us succumb to that humiliation.
If that's what you want to do,
just don't buy there, don't call there.
I remember the worst tongue
lashing I ever received from my father,
this young man came to take me to the movie,
and he took me to the Fox Theater.
I have never been to the Fox Theater.
I have never seen the Fox Theater.
So he took me to the back door where we were supposed to.
I thought that was the way you go in.
They had a place where you bought
tickets, you went up the steps.
It was dark when we went in there.
So when I came home,
my father says, "Well, how was the movie?
What did you see?" And I told him,
he says, "That's not
playing a local theater. Where did you see that?"
I said, the Fox. He said, "You
went to the segregated theater.
You went in the back door."
I didn't know I had gone in the back door.
The young man was trying to be impressive,
and my father really was upset about that.
He thought that was just terrible.
I never forgot that because you just didn't go
places that didn't admit you,
and that was the way you avoided humiliation.
But you went to White Churches,
the ones that said they would let you come in,
but other than that, you didn't.
So I felt humiliated a
little bit when I would ride the public bus,
public transportation because you had to stand up.
But in school, in church,
and at home, your parents taught you.
You're just as good as they are.
Don't let them make you feel bad.
They are the ones who are wrong.
And so you took that everywhere you went,
you had a chance to practice that,
that no matter how they look at you,
no matter how they treat you,
don't feel less than they are.
Feel sorry for them and what's going on with them.
It was interesting when
the student movement occurred
because we were doing things,
of course, you get children on buses. We would talk.
I had to ride the Pryor road bus
to downtown Atlanta and transfer.
And we were always standing waiting on the bus
talking about the fact that we couldn't sit down,
though there were vacant seats,
the White people would get
on the bus at the end of the line,
which was before my street and they would sit one to
a seat next to
the wall of the bus rather than in the aisle.
And we realized later that was to avoid being near us.
But you couldn't sit in front of them.
So if they sat one to a seat near the wall of the bus,
that meant that were vacant seats,
but you couldn't even sit in the back
of the bus because they were
lined up all the way to the back.
Now, that would annoy us,
and we were talking about it all the time.
Well, the law says we can't sit next to them,
but it doesn't say we can't put our books next to them.
That was before the days of the book bag.
And we talked about it over and over.
We put our books in the seat.
And I remember at
the church one day we were talking about
it and we talked about it with
Reverend ML King Sr. And he said,
"Well, make sure you don't touch them,
make sure the books don't fall over
on them because you could be arrested."
So we talked about it for just months,
it would come up in conversation.
And one day the guys
would let the girls get on the bus first.
So I was toward the back of
the bus and somebody bumped me
and handed me some books. And I looked over.
And so I was
passing them and we were putting them in the seats,
and when the books would get up high,
we would hold the books.
And the person would get up.
I remember this lady got up and when she moved out,
Robert King had said, "Thank them if they get up."
So I said, thank you very much.
And as they would move to the front,
we were able to sit down,
and then we could let some of the older people,
people who are now my age,
who were on the bus going
to work. [LAUGHTER] Good, sit down.
And that went on all of that week.
We never said, let's start it today.
I don't know how it started
because I was at the back of the bus.
But that Monday morning,
when that bus came down the hill and I got on it,
all those White people were seated double to the front.
That was the best feeling.
I had had like yes.
They moved to the front,
so we could get on this.
All the old people who lived in
the neighborhood could at
least sit in the back of the bus.
We could at least sit down.
That showed what we could do if we
worked together and we did
something in a peaceful manner.
>> That was so consequential.
Something that happened every
day that you were able to change.
>> Yes. And they did it from then on,
they sat to the front,
we sat in the back.
Though we were still sitting in the back,
we could at least sit down.
And I thought, my.
And the bus driver
used to be rude and insulting, whoever.
You would talk, don't look these people in the face,
just avoid looking at them.
He would say, "You ends, get to the back.
Move to the back, move back."
He would pack us in and we'd
stand all around and all of that.
So you had to work on not feeling humiliated.
Don't let him make you feel bad about who you are.
And you have to work on being very
strong and confident in yourself.
Have a lot of self-respect,
no matter what anybody says to you,
no matter what anybody does to you.
Always believe that you are a good person,
you're a decent person,
you're just as good as that person.
Our parents taught us things like,
if a White person is walking towards you on the sidewalk,
you must step out of the way.
If you run into them, you'll be
arrested for assaulting them.
They taught you how to keep yourself safe when you
were away from them
and they weren't holding your hand and all that thing.
So when I think about those days,
I was not feeling bad about who I was.
I knew I could achieve because your teachers,
your pastors, your parents,
your friends told you that.
They told you to believe in yourself
and not worry about what anybody said.
You were going to make it. And that's
what saw us throughout.
When you used that word humiliation, I thought,
did I live a life feeling I was humiliated?
I knew what they were doing
was supposed to make me feel bad about myself,
but I was determined not to permit that to happen.
>> So fast forward to today and thinking about
how consequential what you did was in 1960.
And here we are in 2018,
and I wanted to ask you if you would,
to reflect, especially as a woman,
what it meant being involved in a movement then and
what advice you might have for young people today,
especially young women who want to be
involved in civil rights movements?
>> Get involved, Number 1.
Get involved, move to the front,
push for positions,
push not only for involvement, but leadership.
It's very important to feel a sense of unity.
And I worry that some people
feel that some things are hopeless.
But the vote, the voice,
the effort to vote.
When I was I think 10,
I started hearing about voting.
I couldn't wait till I was 18 to vote.
I couldn't wait until I was 18.
I voted early this time.
I said, I might die before November 6th. I got to vote.
[LAUGHTER] I'm alive today. Let me go and vote.
That is very important.
What one person can't do singularly,
you can do if you mobilize with other people
around the right ideas, the right efforts.
You just can't sit silently and let people who are not
about the right things move on with their agenda.
And I think women are moving forward.
The fact that we have a woman of
color running for governor of Georgia,
the win is important,
but the effort is just as important.
You have to let people know you're not afraid to try.
You're not going to sit back and let things just happen.
You have to get in the battle.
The battle is not over.
Every day you get up,
there is something you can do if you
unite with somebody to make life better for everybody.
You have to understand that,
you have to believe that,
you can't believe that you are powerless.
As long as you have
life and you can talk to other people,
you can do something about what is going on.
And so I think that's the message.
It's very interesting when I
look at our current president
and sometimes people think the fight is over.
The student movement was,
and it served its purpose,
and what else can we do?
And sometimes people forget.
They are so busy going to a restaurant.
They're so busy mingling
with people of other cultures and
races until they forget
there is still much work to be done.
And along comes a man
like our current president who reminds you.
He reminds you that there
is still work to be done because
there are people like him and there are
people who will mobilize behind him,
and there are people who really don't
understand the importance of respecting, loving,
and supporting other people
regardless as to how they look,
and that at the end of the day,
we're all in the same world.
And so as much as I dislike the leadership, I said,
if you really didn't know why you needed to be in
the battle and working to
improve life for all humanities,
just look at that face
and just listen to what he says and you will know.
Whether or not I wish we hadn't
had that leadership, but we do.
And so we must take advantage of it
and understand the purpose that it serves.
It serves to warn you that you
need to still continue to
strive for a better place for everybody.
>> The battle is not over.
>> That was not over. It is not over.
There are many more things that you need to do.
My husband says, "Must you always be on the battlefield?"
[LAUGHTER] I said yes,
I told the guy who was
working in my yard the day I went to vote.
And I said, have you voted?
He's like I don't know if I'm registered.
I said, you're not voting.
You're not registered to vote.
I said, if you're not registered to vote,
you can't work at my house anymore.
And so [LAUGHTER] he said, "Well, I think I am."
I said I'm getting ready to go and vote.
Get in my car. I will find out today.
He said, "Well, when I go to the Mata station downtown,
they have people registering to vote."
He said, "I heard that they had
thrown out some of the ballots and
things and I feared registration.
I figured they'd thrown out."
I said, get in my car.
We're going to find out.
We went up to Adamsville and walked in there.
He said, on the way there,
we were riding in the south,
"I can't believe I got in your car."
I said, I'm telling you,
if you're not registered to vote,
you can't work at my house.
And when we got there, he was registered to vote,
and he voted. And I voted.
I said, now, don't you feel better about this.
[LAUGHTER] I said, I guess later.
I said, I guess I was tormenting that man,
but I said, that's okay.
I got one man to vote.
>> That's [inaudible]
>> He said he wasn't planning to go and vote
because he didn't think he was registered.
I said, are you insane?
So I guess if everybody just gets one,
and that's maybe radical and insane,
but we laugh about it
now because we both voted last week.
I said, now, you can tell all your friends you voted.
You can ask your sisters if
they voted. Now, you can work.
So I think that's how we network and that's how we work,
and that may be silly,
but that's what I did that day.
That's just the truth.
You're not working at my house
if you're not registered to vote.
You can't come here and even work in my yard.
That won't work for me.
>> That's insane. We need more of that type of insanity.
[LAUGHTER] We need to make sure that
that is contagious insanity.
I just wanted to thank you for sitting with us
today and also thank you for the work that you did.
>> Well, the work is not over.
>> It's not over, but you put your body in
the movement for civil rights,
just to be able to have
the same civil and human rights as other people.
>> But you have to make a decision.
I think about Howard Thurman,
who says, "There are two things you must know.
You must know who you are and who you will take with you.
And if you ever get those two confused,
your life will be mixed with turmoil."
In other words, if you decide who will go
with you before you know who you are.
I always had an idea
of I didn't know exactly what I was going to be in life,
but I knew that I wanted to love people like me.
I made that decision very
early that you want to be kind to others.
My first Bible verse,
be kind to one another. You make that decision.
So when the time comes for you to do something,
you don't have to question.
You already know because
you made a decision about who you are.
And if people would work on self identity,
work on making a decision,
my mother used to say when you
get up in the morning and dress,
she said, "Well, where are you going?"
I said I don't know.
She'd say, "Well, how do you know what to wear?"
You have to know who you are
before you start selecting friends and all of that.
So you need to spend time sometimes alone,
asking yourself what person am I?
What is it I believe outside of
everybody and what everybody else is doing?
And then when situations occur in the world,
you know how to be selective based
on your basic character, who you are.
And you just don't run out in
the street and whatever somebody else is doing,
you tag onto it.
You have already made a decision about it.
That's really, I think,
a personal obligation of people to self identify.
>> That's a very important message for
students today or young people today.
Thank you so much
for spending your time with us [OVERLAPPING].
>> You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
>> It was such a pleasure.
[LAUGHTER] Thank you Gwenn.