[Interviewer] And if I'm here.
Okay. Okay. [Videographer] ATLSM - Morris Dillard,
scene one, take one.
[Interviewer] I want to thank you for being here with us Mr. Dillard.
um, you were one of the original brain trust,
the folks who changed
history as students, as young people.
And so I wanted to start,
if you, if you would just tell us a little bit about you,
where you were born, where you went to school,
uh, before you got
to ITC. [Morris Dillard] Morehouse. [Interviewer] I'm sorry, to Morehouse.
[Morris Dillard] I was born and raised in central Alabama,
in a rural community, a place
called Luverne Alabama, farming community.
I went to high school.
We called them if they were black schools,
we called them training schools.
I went to Crenshaw County Training School.
Um, most of my teachers had completed
their undergraduate work at Alabama State College,
now University, Tuskegee Institute,
now Tuskegee University.
Um, but my biology teacher approached me in
my senior year as we approached
graduation about the possibility of coming to Morehouse.
I had never heard of Morehouse,
did not know anybody who had attended Morehouse.
Um, but for some reason he thought
that Morehouse would be a good fit for me.
although he was from Alabama state,
and, uh, Morehouse was offering a small scholarship and
the opportunity to work, uh, to pay expenses.
and uh, I discussed it with my parents,
and after much debate,
because I was needed on the farm,
it was decided that I
would leave the farm and go to
Morehouse. So, in 1955 I came to Morehouse, as
a freshman and met Dr. Mays, Dr. Benjamin Elijah
Mays an incredible, extraordinary man who
had perhaps after my mother and father,
the greatest influence on my life.
The environment in which I had grown up was
a rigidly segregated environment,
segregated along racial lines.
At an early age you learn
your place and you stayed in your place,
or you risked bodily harm, and even death.
So my parents taught us,
all of their children to stay in our place.
There was something uncomfortable about that,
but it was what we were supposed to
do And so we did it and so we lived.
[Interviewer] Do you think that your parents did that out of fear for you?
They were afraid for you? [Morris Dillard] Afraid for, for all of us.
they were afraid for, for us, the children.
afraid for themselves. There were ample examples of
what happened to, to black people
who did not stay in that place.
Uh, we were constantly reminded of
the risk and the cost of getting out of your lane.
But, uh, when I came to Morehouse, Dr. Mays had organized
the college around the notion
that black people are just as good as white people
and that it was his job to convince us of that fact
above all else. To teach
us science and mathematics literature,
but to teach us most of all,
that we were equal.
there was nothing we couldn't do, indeed,
that we couldn't do better than anybody else
if we applied ourselves
And that all of this stuff that we had been taught
about inferiority was, was bogus.
He pounded that into us
every day until we
came to believe it and to believe in it .
and to reject what we had been taught to believe in
our early years. Uh, and having,
having acquired this new knowledge of ourselves.
And, and the question, the next question obviously was,
what are you going to do about it?
I mean you can't, you can't live with
that. You can't live with that knowledge.
You can't live knowing that
you are somebody else, that you are not.
what you were told that
you... So the, so that the, the need to act was, was the logical next step.
Uh, so we were ready when the opportunity presented itself.
[Interviewer] And you met Lonnie King and Julian Bond and
Joe Pearson? [Morris Dillard] I did. I did, I did.
Uh, I was, Lonnie was a little a little older than I.
He had, he had come to Morehouse, uh, a few years before I did.
and he had gone off to the navy.
Um, he returned. uh, when he returned,
he and I kind of hit it off as as friends,
We took classes together,
and that uh, I was moving into the, the mid,
mid years of my college career.
And Lonnie was at
about the same point as a returning student.
So he and I grew close,
and I knew what he was thinking about when
he started talking about
organizing the Atlanta student movement.
[Interviewer] What did you major in at Morehouse?
[Morris Dillard] I majored in French. I, I, um, uh, that was not my initial plan.
Uh, my mother wanted me to
Be a doctor, uh, but, uh, as most, as I suspect most students do,
they explore a lot of
career options from there at the undergraduate level.
And Uh, I, uh, this is another, another important factor
in my, in my journey.
Uh, I was fortunate enough to receive
a, a travel study, grant while at
Morehouse and spent a year abroad, a year in Europe.
Most of that time was spent in France, in Paris.
Um, that opened my eyes.
and that was the purpose of the, of the grant.
quite frankly, it was to go
abroad and see how other people lived.
And uh, and I, I did. And that was, that was,
was a completely new experience for
me to be around people from all over
the world who saw me as...as another human being.
And I felt comfortable in
that environment, believe it or not.
Although I had, I had grown
up in a segregated,a racially-segregated environment.
That training, that deprogramming
that I had gone through under, the leadership
of Dr. Mays at Morehouse in
the first two, three years of my college career
had prepared me to be
receptive to a more open environment in Europe.
[Interviewer] When you traveled on your study
abroad and you came back,
Is that when just
help me understand the time period a little bit.
So, when you came back from France,
was that when you... was that
in 1960? [Morris Dillard] I came back to,
I came back to Morehouse in 1958.
I guess it was fifty-se...
fifty-eight, just before the student movement kicked off.
But things were beginning
to, to, to happen on a nationwide basis.
The change was in the air.
I mean the, the Montgomery bus boycott was very
much, uh, on the, on the front pages of
the newspapers, uh, during that period of time.
So, when I came back, I came back, I came back to a nation,
a country, a region, the South.
That was what things were beginning to happen.
[Interviewer] Did your time abroad,
especially, so being in France,
being abroad and having equality be the norm,
and then having to come back?
[Morris Dillard] Very difficult. Very difficult adjustment [Interviewer] Yeah.
[Morris Dillard] The adjustment period was long and tough for me.
Uh, I quite, quite frankly,
It...it happened as
We, uhh, I got off
the boat in New York and
boarded a greyhound bus for Atlanta.
Where I, when I boarded the bus,
I was able to sit
wherever I wanted to sit on the bus in New York.
But when we, we got to Kentucky,
That's when I faced
the color line and had to move to the back of the bus...
and that's when the pain of segregation hit me.
So having lived a year
doing pretty much what I wanted to do,
how I wanted to do it,
where I wanted to do it,
with whom I wanted to do it.
Having gone through that for a year,
and all of a sudden having to re-adjust to that pre-
period when I had to
stay in my place growing up as a youngster,
that, that was hard for me to accept.
In fact, I never did.
It was, it was too late.
I mean, I had gone, it was, it was, it was too late.
I had, I had been converted if you please.
So, I was ready.
[Interviewer] So that you trip abroad really helped to...
[Morris Dillard] No question about that.
(crosstalk) can't go back, I can't go back to That.
Yeah. Yeah.
[Interviewer] So, let's flash forward to the fall of 1960.
[Morris Dillard] Okay [Interviewer] The Rich's sit-in was October 19th.
[Morris Dillard] Okay. [Interviewer] Can you talk,
and not even just about Rich's,
because of a lot of people
I think talk about Rich's.
but when Norma, when Norma June came in and,
and, and, and we were able to
talk with her over the summer, she said, you know,
I don't think a lot of people realize there is sit-in
every day and that Rich's just
kind of happened to be the flashpoint, the big one.
But that there were sit-ins going on at
Woolworth's and at Walgreens, and at all these different places.
Um, can you talk a little bit about
that environment of the sit-ins
from your perspective as a student?
as a young man who was, who was in
the midst of it and creating this change?
[Morris Dillard] Well, to begin with,
you need to understand that
we had, we had a lot of students to work with.
I mean, we were talking 5 to
7,000 students in the Atlanta University Center.
most of whom felt the same way that I felt, they had
grown up pretty much the same way I
had grown up in a segregated society,
but had gone through a period of
deprogramming where they came
to know themselves as human beings,
equal to other human beings
capable of doing whatever they applied themselves to.
So,they were ready. We had 6,000 troops.
So, so the application of simple organization principles
led us to the realization that we had,
We had resources and therefore we had, we had options.
We did not need to focus on...on one location,
one company, one store,or one restaurant.
That if we organized ourselves,
we could, we could attack the whole city.
And that's kinda where we looked at it.
We looked at it from a, from a military point of view.
I guess, although Lonnie was one of the, one of
the few students who had military experience.
um, but we organized along military lines.
We created uh, a Group A, and a Group B, and a...
Group C; and group A went here, and Group B and we
Established communications
between headquarters those groups.
And, and, uh, we had, we had a strategy that we used for
Rich's that was different from
the strategy that we use for city hall.
Uh, so, um, so it was, it was, it was...and this was probably unique to the Atlanta movement.
uhm, it was duplicated later on by others. But,
um, we, we were perhaps one of
the, one of the best organized students
sit in movements in the, in the country at the time,
uh, because, because we...having all of those resources
and uh, having, having the leadership that we had available to us,
we were able to put that, put all of
those students together in a way and deploy them in
a way that, that created
a, created a momentum in its own right. That the city had to deal with.
And the business community realized that we
weren't just a flash in
the pan here that we're dealing with,
with something that's pretty serious.
And [Interviewer] Um, then then Dr. Reverend Moss had spoken with
us earlier and it just hit me just now
this idea of organization that you talked about as well,
that since the Atlanta student movement,
there hasn't really been a group of folks
struggling for civil rights who have been
able to replicate
the amazing...organi-- just the Organization of day to day who goes where?
Not to mention the organization
of not just the boycotts, right,
but the legal and
the economic side of this entire movement.
[Morris Dillard] That may be true. I, I don't
presume to know everything that, that went on nationally,
but, but certainly among, among students.
I think we probably were unique in that regard.
Um, and that's one of the, one of
the reasons I believe we were so effective,
that uh, we, we came to realize that,
that we had a lot of options and that...that we
couldn't...if one thing didn't work,
that we could try something
else and keep the, keep the movement going.
And that, that once-- It's kind of like driving a big Mac truck up a hill.
If you get to the top of the hill,
it's, it's, it's, it's virtually impossible to stop it.
We knew that. We sensed that.
[Interviewer] So you were, um, I, I... Lonnie wanted me to make sure that I asked
you about the big fundraiser that you
coordinated with those Christmas cards
and that was part of the organization as well.
I've been trying so hard to find
those original cards, and I haven't been able to.
I know A.U. center has one on
display and I haven't been--(crosstalk)[Morris Dillard] Is that right? [Interviewer]They do.
as part of the Atlanta student movement exhibit,
they've got at A.U. Center, but how as, as a youngster,
how did you affect that?
How was that done in 1960?
[Morris Dillard] That was, uh, that. It was,
uh, it was, it was an idea that grew out of
it, a decision to turn the movement away from,
from just day to day demonstrations, sit-ins,
if you please, protests to
something that was more economic base.
In other words, we decided that, that we
might get a better result if we
if we applied economic pressure to
the, uh, retail establishments downtown and in the metro area.
Um, so we call for a boycott.
A Christmas boycott of the stores.
and that's where
Rich's came, became... that's when Riche's became one of the prime targets.
Because Rich's was
huge. It was the largest department store in the region.
It was big. Christmas was big at Rich's. Um, so our focus was on Rich's,
Um, but the idea was to
was to discourage, um, uh, the whole community from
shopping during the holiday season.
And we, and we especially call on
all black folk in Atlanta, not to
shop during the Christmas holidays
to show their support for the demands of the students.
And um, so we haven't told them, I asked them not to do something.
The question then became,
what do you, what do you offer, what are you offering in
lieu of. Then somebody came up with the idea of,
let's, uh, let's design and sell Christmas cards,
black oriented Christmas cards.
And uh, there were a number of students who had talent in
graphic arts who came up with designs
and uh, we were fortunate enough to find
someone willing to donate the printing services.
and all we needed to do was to develop
the outlets for the distribution of those cards.
So, the sale and distribution of
those cards. And that's, that's what I did.
We, we didn't need a lot of money,
but we needed some money to run the student movement.
We didn't need a lot of money
because we, the manpower was free.
students volunteered their services.
That was and that's our biggest need.
Um, they, the adults in the community,
many adults in the community wanted to get involved
and they contributed food and stuff like that.
but we still hadhave expenses that,
that, that required cash and uh, so we, we needed to generate, we generate some cash.
and the sale of the greeting cards are provided to one source of
income for the, the just normal expenses
of running a major organization.
And that's what we became,
We became a major organization
The Atlanta Committee on
the Appeal for Human Rights became a major organization.
[Interviewer] So... and out of that immense knowledge and activist spirit.
Those folks then transitioned into
the NAACP and really
kind of changed the outlook of that organization.
Right? [Morris Dillard] Well, just the, the, the, the leadership,
the leadership of the Atlanta student movement,
it should be said, sacrificed a great deal.
It was, it was, I mean, you, you, uh, you, you had to postpone
your studies. Uh, so you didn't graduate on
time. Uh, some of,
some of the leaders had families, had young families.
So they began to, in the mid-sixties, in the mid, mid-sixties, they began to, to ask themselves,
what am I going to do with the rest of my life?
And so some of us began the process of starting our careers,
and uh, some of us left Atlanta,
Went, went off to graduate schools,
or others went, took jobs outside of the city.
But towards the end of
the 60's, we, uh, we began
to come back to Atlanta for a variety of reasons.
and we kind of looked around and said,
oh my God, what we worked
for and achieved in the early '60s.
It looks like, you know, we're going in reverse here.
that we didn't consolidate our gains.
So, what are we going to do about it?
Uh, we worked hard. Some of us took a lot of blows.
Many of us went to jail.
Uh, so what, what shall we do?
And the question became, do we, do we start a new organization,
try to revive the Atlanta student movement,
or do we look at
existing civil rights organizations
and move in and, and join up with them?
and we decided on course of
action and then the NAACP became that target.
And uh, it was, it was kind of ripe for 'takeover', if you please, and we
ran, we ran the candidates for president
and for the executive board of the NAACP.
and our candidates were successful.
Lonnie became the president of the NAACP,
Some of us were elected to the executive board.
and so that we were in control
of an established civil rights organization that
needed only new energy
uh, and, and, and new direction and uh, for the next year or so.
starting in 67, 68,
uh, we used the NAACP to renew
the attack on, uh, on, on segregation
and discrimination in, in, in metropolitan Atlanta.
Uh, and that, uh, and, and, and we discovered that it was, it was worse than we thought.
We had only scratched the surface, in 1960.
Getting the, um, right to, to sit, uh, sit in at a,
uh, at a restaurant or at
a lunch counter was, was, was just the tip of the iceberg.
We had not really, um, ah, dismantle
the system of segregation
as we, we, we might have, might have thought we had.
So one of the things that we decided
to do under the auspices of
the NAACP was to take a look at the media, the radio,
television, newspapers, uh, as, as,
a, as a, as an industry, an institution,
if you please, that was having
an extraordinary impact on,
on, on the lives of black folk in Atlanta.
And the reason was quite simple is it, is that, uh, you did not
have a, uh, blacks in the decision
making positions in the radio and television stations.
and other communities, some of the communities had,
had, had also begun to, to poke around in
the media, uh, and, and, and to see if, if some, some changes could not be brought
about through the process of
challenging the renewal of their FCC licenses.
Radio and television stations require
a federal license in order to
broadcast over the airwaves.
And, uh, so I'll never forgetLonnie, the president,
of the NAACP, fell ill and was in the hospital and
I had been appointed the executive
director of the local branch of
the NAACP working for Lonnie.
And uh, I went to see him in the hospital
One Saturday afternoon and he was reading the newspaper.
and he says, Morris,
I want you to write a letter
to all of the radio and television stations,
inviting them to a meeting.
We want to talk to them
about the renewal of their license.
And I says, why do you want to do that?
And he says, uh, we, we are not
getting a fair, we're not
getting fair treatment in the media.
And we are going to challenge
them on on the grounds that we
are not being fairly treated in the media.
And I said, Lonnie, we can't do that.
They are our friends because to be, to be sure ,
we had relied on the media during the heyday
of the student movement to
provide a certain measure of protection for us.
Because, uh, when you, when you go out there,
uh, you don't know what to
expect. And, uh, you're much more likely to,
to come out, uh, uh, with
your, with your life if, if the bright lights
of the television are focused on what you're doing.
So, so we had gotten pretty decent coverage by
the Atlanta television stations and
Atlanta newspapers, um, during the, during the early '60s.
Uh, so I kinda resisted but he insisted,
And so I wrote the letter, he signed it ,
and we sent it to every radio and television station
in metropolitan Atlanta whose license was up for renewal.
Actually, we sent it to everybody.
that we didn't know whose license
was up for renewal at the time.
Uh, and uh, and uh, we got some calls.
Saying, who are you to threaten us, we ain't coming.
So we say...Lonnie said,
well, just this...the meeting is set,
We'll see. We'll see who shows up.
And to my surprise,
on the day of the meeting, all of them showed up.
They all came and we laid out our demands,
if you please, and that's what they were.
And we said that this is what has been
happening in terms of
your treatment of the black community
and, uh, this is what we think needs to happen.
And, uh, we'd like to sit
down and negotiate agreements with you
individually to achieve what we think is, is fair treatment.
And, um, and we created what we call the Broadcast
Coalition, uh, headed by the NAACP,
but involved in several organizations in
the community because we needed a lot of
manpower to actually negotiate these agreements.
came up with the form agreement
for radio stations, for television stations.
And sent out teams of, of, of, of negotiators to
each of these, uh, stations and actually
negotiated formal agreements whereby they committed to do
one, two, three, four, five, six in terms of, uh, on-air personnel ,
in terms of behind the camera people ,
in terms of reporters,
in terms of,
uh, in terms of, of , getting the news, um, and, and that sort of thing.
in those, those agreements were actually, uh, actually implemented. Now ,
to be sure, uh, as I look back on that experience,
it was a great achievement by the way
at the time. All of a sudden, you see,
you see black faces showing up on your evening news.
uh, uh, you know that there are black assignment editors and,
And, uh, but, but that was something that we, we, we missed
quite frankly. Uh, we didn't, we didn't establish a monitoring system
whereby the content of
the broadcast could be evaluated on an ongoing basis.
And, uh, and feedback provided to the stations.
Because I believe that, uh, many
of the owners and managers of those stations ,
out of spite and ill
Will retaliated by showing the,
that the, the, the black side
of the black community. Even to this day,
I think that, um, the,
the, the, the, the, uh, I don't know how to put it other than to just say that
the negative aspects of
what goes on in the black community is
projected in
The news in programming--(crosstalk) [Interviewer] --disparate amount.
and programming. [Morris Dillard] Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely,
absolutely. Absolutely. They, even today,
uh, and I, and I traced that to that period
when we, we achieved our objective,
but we didn't, we didn't follow through, um, to
ensure that, that the real change
that we sought was brought about.
And that's a, that's a regret
that I still maintain that we're
going to have to do something about, about,
I think the media is
having a, uh, it's having a, a, a negative effect on,
on, uh, on, on the growth, and development
of our you...younger generation of people.
And we're not paying enough attention to that.
[Interviewer] So speaking of, uh, about young people today as, as one of these,
as one of the founding members,
right? Of this, this brain trust of talent and ad-advocacy and activism.
Is there anything that you as
a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, think that
the young people today need to know
as they look at the appeal, right?
And they look at some of those parts of
the appeal that are still unanswered.
[Morris Dillard] Mhhm, absolutely. I'd say,
the number one that, but you have to
understand that all that glitters
ain't gold. That we still
face some major problems in this country in,
terms of, um, in terms of what's important and what's not
important in terms of the quality
of life in our, in our communities and our neighborhoods.
The unevenness of life in general.
You've got these extraordinary gaps between
Group A and Group B.
And I don't believe that can, that can be sustained.
Uh, so, so we, we need to give attention to the fundamentals of
our social order to ensure that it
is, that the fundamentals are
solid and thus the social order can be sustained.
And, and that happens when people ,
first of all, acknowledge that there are problems.
Secondly, commit to join forces to attack those problems.
And, and third, that they, they act in good faith and unselfishly.
I mentioned earlier that those of us who were
involved in the student movement in the early '60s,
were w-we, we, we sacrificed a lot.
I mean, we gave up a lot.
Uh, I, I, I, I sometimes think wistfully
what might have been, if I had,
not. What, what might have, if Lonnie had not given so much of himself.
Um, what might he be today?
Somebody had to give up something. You just can't.
You can't do all of that. And, and enjoy the good life.
You can't, you've got to, you got to give up something.
So, somebody has got to step up and say,
I will, I'll give up something.
I'll, you know, I'll, I'll sacrifice a career objective.
I'll sacrifice a good job here.
And, you know, an offer there
and that, that happens...
That happens. Um, older people change, bringing about change is a, is a, is a task that
old people can support, but I maintain.
do not do well in a leadership position.
It requires too much energy.
And if there's one thing that older people,
I'm speaking generally
now, lack is, we just don't have the, that kind of energy.
We have the will, we, we want to do it,
but we just don't have the energy .
we need young people with a lot of energy willingly spend
hours and, hours, you know, hours and hours, you know, banging at it,
banging at it, banging at it .
because it ain't giving away.
It's not, it's not going to give in without, without, uh, without a fight.
[Interviewer] I want to thank you for spending time with us today,
Mr. Dillard, and I'm
sure that I am going to ask you again.
I'm going to come back to the well again
and ask you to sit with me and with us and
with Lonnie and talk
about some of the possibilities
for our young people today.
[Morris Dillard] I'd be happy to do it. [Interviewer] Thank you
very much. [Morris Dillard] Sure thing.