[Dr. Moss] Let me know when you're ready for the voice check.
[Interviewer] Are you going to need your book and stuff?
[Moss] No. [Interviewer] Okay. Put that on.
Yeah.
[Videographer] You're good. ATLSM,
Dr. Otis Moss Junior,
scene one, take one.
All right. See one moment.
All right. Whenever you're ready. Okay.
[Interviewer] So, I'm here today with one of the members of the Atlanta student movement, Brain Trust,
and I'd like to talk with you today
and anything that you feel like we're not covering and you would like to cover,
just feel free to, to talk about it. And um, but I wanted to start with
you telling me just a little bit about you,
So, where you were born,
When, where you went to school?
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] I grew up in a country setting, a rural setting .
a few miles out from Lagrange, Georgia.
The address, the post office, was Lagrange, Georgia.
I often identified, identified as Troupe County because I really didn't live in the city proper.
And that's a backstory to that as well.
On a farm, my father was a farmer, a share cropper,
who also worked for the WPA,
which was a part of the
Roosevelt administration's recovery program
during the Great Depression.
And in my home, there was
a beautiful atmosphere of
support from my father and mother.
Unfortunately, our mother died
when we were all quite young.
I was four years old,
My younger brother was seven months old ,
and three sisters who were not yet teenagers.
My father then became the single parent of five children.
He never remarried. When I was 16,
My father was killed in an automobile accident, not too
far from where we lived. And for a year.
I was a junior in high school,
and for a year I lived with neighbors.
And that's how it got into
my autobiography or biography that
I was orphaned at the age of 16.
Technically, that's not accurate.
I simply lived with neighbors during
my senior year in
high school and then went off to Morehouse,
and Morehouse college became my home.
[Interviewer] What happened with your siblings?
Where did they live? [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] My siblings, as
each one graduated from elementary school,
which was the seventh grade,
moved to the city, lived with relatives ,
and continued high school
because my younger brother was so young.
When our mother passed, my father's sister,
who lived about 10 miles away,
became his surrogate mother.
so we went back and forth, to visit ,
and to bond with him in the house of my aunt ,
who was my father's sister.
And, unfortunately, he was never
able to actually move back into
the house because of
the care system my father was working.
so there was no one to care for him at home.
So, my father would pack us up,
get a bus once per month,
and we all gathered at my aunt's home.
and it became a family affair.
[Interviewer] That's interesting. And your father worked for the WPA?
[Moss]Yes. [Interviewer]. What did he do for WPA?
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] They prepared roads, they dug ditches,
Whatever they were building,
rebuilding the community, cutting canals,
and doing necessary work outdoors,
and at the same time, saving,
or improving or enhancing the environment.
[Interviewer] That's really interesting. So, you
got to Morehouse in the late '50s?
Mid '50s? [Moss] Yes. 1952.
[Interviewer] 2! Early '50s. [Moss] Yes.
[Interviewer] What was happening at Morehouse in the 1950s?
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Morehouse college was an exciting place.
I've often said that some of
my classmates and college students,
colleagues had complaints about housing ,
and food, and other things.
But when I came to
the Morehouse campus and found Graves Hall,
the stately historic building,
I had moved into the Taj
Mahal. So, I could not fully grasp some of
my classmates' complaints going from
a country outhouse to a shower and indoor facilities.
This was a revolutionary transition,
but deeper than that
on a daily basis,
I was in the company of young people,
young men who had hopes and
dreams and aspirations, who were smart,
who were alert, who were
reading books and papers and periodicals.
And our faculty that had a lifelong commitment in
excellence and the development of men of
Morehouse to help them become Morehouse men.
Especially our President, Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays.
So, everyday, chapel was required if you lived on campus,
not five days a week,
but six days a week,
Monday through Friday and Sunday morning.
That's unheard of in these times and we rebelled,
but there was one chapel hour
that was a cardinal sin to miss
and that was Tuesday morning when Dr. Mays spoke.
Everybody across that period of
27 years when Dr. Mays was president of Morehouse .
has a story or two or three or more of
that experience with Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays .
and what he said from that lectern,
from that podium in chapel ,
has nurtured us and
challenged us for the rest of our days.
[Interviewer] So he was a mentor to you. [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Indeed
[Interviewer] To all of you. [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Yes. [Interviewer] What is one of the memories that you have?
Or one of the stories that you could talk about with Dr. Mays.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] The first time I met Dr.
Mays was at a high school graduation.
not my high school graduation,
but another high school graduation.
Prior to my graduation,
he was the keynote speaker.
I rushed out of the auditorium,
made my way to the parking lot.
He had driven himself to the school ,
and following the ceremony ,
was headed back to Atlanta,
Had a chance to shake his hand and said to him,
I expect to meet you at
Morehouse. [Interviewer] And you were a high school student?
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Yes, and fast forward ,
three or four years later,
I was on the lawn of the President's home where
he and Mrs. Mays were giving a reception for freshman.
and I shook his hand again and reminded him of
the time I had the privilege to meet
him and make that kind of announcement .
and now I was living that. He congratulated me.
but I also remember
the first chapel service
when he spoke to the freshmen class .
and he said something that can be found
in the speeches of Dr. King and many others.
Whatever you do, do it so well, that no one living,
no one dead, no one yet born, could do it
any better. [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Reach for the stars.
and grasp the moon. If it falls
in your lot to be a street sweeper.
Sweep streets like Michelangelo carved marble.
sweep streets like Langston Hughes composed poetry.
Sweep streets like Marian Anderson sang Ave Maria.
Sweep streets so well that all
of the host of heaven will have to pause and say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
Never allow the world
to dismiss you because of a lazy,
or sloppy work. [Interviewer] That was amazing, so he really inspired you
and the other members
of this brain trust in the movement.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Absolutely [Interviewer] There's a lot of the HBCU presidents were afraid for you all.
afraid for your
lives. [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Yes. One of the things that Dr. Mays would say
to the men of
Morehouse and those who became Morehouse men ,
never volunteer to pay for segregation.
What he was dealing with was going
to a segregated theater,
going up in the buzzard roost, the balcony .
and he was so emphatic on
that, that I never went to one of those theaters.
Now, I did go, but they were theaters in
the African American community that were designated.
they were segregated away from the other side of town.
but there were not petitions or balconies.
He also said, when you ride the bus,
if you are forced by law to go to the back seat,
make sure that your mind stays up front.
and one day your body will catch up with your mind.
and that was so clear,
so profound that when we witnessed
the Montgomery movement led by Dr. King,
a Morehouse man, the words of Dr. King,
or Dr. Mays were being implemented by Dr. King.
[Interviewer] I never knew that. I knew that Dr.
Mays was inspiring, but I did not know.
I did not know
that, wow. [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] And to be in that atmosphere for 4 years.
and for me, 7 years ,
because I continued in seminary for
3 more years after college for my seminary degree.
and then at ITC,
another year in special studies.
So, I got to know and to work with the Lonnie Kings and
The Rosalyn Popes and the Maurice Dillards and the Julian Bonds, just to name a few.
and across the street, persons like Norma June Wilson Davis,
now and Marian Wright Edelman.
Marianne Smith from Morris Brown. And the late
Ruby Doris Smith who was in
my first sit-in group at the state capitol.
It was a family of freedom fighters.
[Interviewer] Amazing. Hang on 1 second. Let me ask them a question
they're getting... Loni's getting out of hand in there here
[Interviewer] That's amazing. So, you were the interim chair of
the movement when Lonnie and Hershelle went to jail.
that day in Richmond. [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] A few days,
It was... [Interviewer] Because there was
a lot of stuff that happened, and you had to get things ready.
You had to do all the communications, I mean, all that.
So, I wanted to ask you about that.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] All right. [Interviewer] I wanted to get started back
about how you kept in communication and how you kept the movement going when the co-chairs were in prison. [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] All right.
[Interviewer] Is that OK to talk about?
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] That's fine. [Interviewer] Okay. We're still going. Yeah.
Okay. Perfect. [Interviewer] Ok. So, let's
flash forward to October nineteenth, 1960.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Yes. [Interviewer] And Lonnie King and Herschelle Sullivan ,
along with other students, went to jail.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Right. Norma June Wilson
and Morris Dillard and so many more.
[Interviewer] And then so, you then, had to become
the interim chair of the movement [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Lonnie who was
the chair and it was a dynamic fearless chair
asked me to take
over for the period of time that they were in jail.
And this is a back story because it was not,
we didn't hold any election.
He simply asked if I would do this.
and I immediately agreed.
the responsibilities were awesome, because I
had the task of visiting the jail every
day. Dr. King was in jail with them
and meeting with the adult supporters in the community.
it was called the Adult Student Liaison Committee.
and also communicating with the students on the ground who
had not gone to jail and this, this kind of multiple tasks.
But I was also a pastor in South Atlanta,
but and I was married.
and my wife, late wife, who died
a few years following that was a student at Spelman.
Her name was Sharon Joanne.
we all called her Joanne,
but we had an unwritten agreement,
We both participated in somewhere .
there are photographs of her marching on
the picket line with a sign saying segregation must go.
But there was a kind of
an inside agreement that we would not participate in
demonstrations or sit ins together because we did not want
the power of nonviolence to be personally
tested, in the event, that
one was abused physically or otherwise.
My responsibility was also to communicate beyond Atlanta.
And in somewhere in the record,
that is probably a telegram sent out to Roy Wilkins of
the NAACP asking for nationwide support for our movement.
and a principled assignment,
a key assignment was for me,
along with our key adult supporters and
other students who had not gone to
jail to meet with the mayor of the city of Atlanta.
[Interviewer] I wanted to ask you about that,
How you negotiated those
meet that meeting with Mayor Hartsfield.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] We had some demands.
One, that you, Mr. Mayor,
meet with immediately all of the leaders of
the downtown establishments and
the public, persons in
charge of the public facilities, of restaurants,
cafeteria, et cetera, and begin negotiations for
the desegregation of all of
these facilities in Atlanta, number one.
Number two, we want everybody who
has been arrested to be released without bail.
Now the back story there was, they had made a commitment ,
the students to go to jail without bail,
So, and that was a moral commitment.
So, we did not want that moral commitment broken.
So, we said we want them released without bail.
And interestingly enough, the Mayor agreed.
He was in the meeting writing down all of the demands.
he said that we can do that.
And he said, I will begin negotiating with the merchants.
Then we said, well, we want a report in 15 days.
and we will evaluate in 30 days the progress.
So, all of the students were released ,
much to their surprise and to some to their dissatisfaction.
they were expecting to be in jail much, much longer.
But something peculiar and unexpected and
brutal happened when we went to the jail,
the county jail, to pick up all of the students en masse,
There was a deputy sheriff
waiting for Dr. King from
the Dekalb county. Now, the challenge here is transporting Dr. King from
Fulton County jail to Dekalb county jail
at night was not a happy moment.
The sheriff of Fulton County said to Dr. King,
you will be safer in my jail
Dr. King spent the weekend in Fulton County jail.
Everybody was disappointed.
We felt responsible because
Lonnie and others had invited him.
He was getting ready to go to Nigeria, at the invitation
of the first independent President
of the of Nigeria.
Here he was in jail.
Mrs. King expecting, Co-Pastor of Ebeneezer.
Everybody is released and
now Dr. King is in jail by himself.
Monday morning, they picked him up from
the Fulton County jail and handcuffed him,
transported him to Dekalb County.
He had a team of great lawyers,
but, the judge, Oscar Mitchell,
Judge Mitchell looked down
from the bench at Attorney Hollowell,
the late attorney Hollowell,
while he was making a point in the case and said,
how much more time is this going to take?
got a fishing trip coming up.
All of this is in the midst of the trial.
Another piece of backstory, Dr. Samuel Williams,
a professor of philosophy and religion at Morehouse ,
was in the courtroom and was arrested because he didn't
move fast enough when the guard asked him to move.
All of these dynamics have taken place.
The judge sentenced Dr. King four months,
Four to six months hard labor on public works,
which meant Georgia Chain Gang. [Interviewer] Way down in Reidsville.
Right? [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Before the lawyers could
appeal the judge's decision, the next morning,
somewhere between 2 and 4 A.M.
they put chains on his body, handcuffed him,
put him in the prison wagon,
and drove 230 miles across the state to
the Reidsville Prison where
the electric chair was housed.
And here he was for the first time, alone in jail.
cut off from the community,
and things began to happen.
There are two things that ought to be remembered.
I think. The letter that Dr. King wrote to Mrs. King,
Coretta Scott King
I have used it for many years.
Everybody ought to read
that first letter from a jailhouse before Birmingham.
However, there was an intervention on the part
of then Senator Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy.
Now, Senator John F. Kennedy who was running for
president in a tight race, called Mrs. King,
as the record shows,
and Robert Kennedy called the judge,
And the judge released Dr. King.
Shortly thereafter, we had
a community wide mass meeting at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
and that's when daddy king,
Dr. Martin Luther King Senior,
and Reverend Abernathy speaking at that mass meeting,
I was there and said to the people,
"I had endorsed Nixon.
And was very honest because .
I didn't think a Catholic
ought to be president." And then he raised his voice,
"But!" I have never been able to
write so well that I didn't need an eraser for my pen.
And then he went on to say he was
changing his endorsement as of
that moment and he was going to get
all the votes he could
get and put them in the hands, or the laps.
I think he said. The lap of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Dr. Abernathy followed him and said,
"it's time to throw away all of
the Nixon buttons and lift up Senator Kennedy."
When the meeting was over,
there were papers lined up and down Auburn Avenue.
They were Nixon signs and handouts.
And, of course, the story is that Kennedy won
by about 113,000 votes.
Someone figured it out and said he won
by less than one half vote per precinct.
but that was not an accident.
A Flyer was prepared,
endorsed by ministers across the country,
African American ministers,
someone says they printed 11 million copies.
Pretty fantastic for 1960. They were
distributed in Atlanta, Cleveland,
Chicago, New York, Detroit, St. Louis,
San Francisco, L.A., and all of
the major urban centers in America.
In every church
So, I maintain without any fear of successful contradiction,
that Dr. King elected.
President Kennedy and Vice President
Johnson, 1960, November election.
[Interviewer] And so, if we take that line back: you, Lonnie, Herschelle, Roslyn,
Julian, the Atlanta student movement,
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] The Atlanta Student Movement
changed the history of our nation
from the office of President on down.
The Atlanta
Student Sit-In Movement played a key role in the presidential election of 1960.
And if one wanted to be bold,
we could say that our movement
elected the president of the United States in 1960.
Now, many people do not want to write that or say it,
but history is a swift witness.
But there's something else here.
Unfortunately, President Kennedy was assassinated.
President Johnson.
Vice President Johnson succeeded him. In 1964.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was the candidate ,
running opposite of Senator Goldwater.
He was elected by a landslide.
So, our movement elected two presidents within four years.
And when President Carter ran for president,
he was standing on the shoulders
of our movement coming out of Georgia. Plains, Georgia,
So, Dr. King and the movement,
the sit-in movement in
this brief moment in history, elected three presidents.
Fast forward to the '90s,
the 1990s. President William Jefferson Clinton stood on
the shoulders of the leadership
and the foundation laid by
the movement created through
the works of Dr. King and students.
So, our movement elected a fourth president.
I'm not saying that the Atlanta Movement alone,
but I'm talking about collectively.
[Interviewer] But it was, it was the students. [Moss] Yes.
[Interviewer] Young people who came together.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Absolutely. And now fast forward
now. Now, we are parents and grandparents.
Fast forward to 2008
And when we see President Barack Obama,
the first African American president,
of the United States of America.
All of these links are connected.
They are not in isolation.
And in spite of all of the difficulties,
the Atlanta Student Movement is still writing history.
[Interviewer] Well. So, I had some other questions, but I'm not exactly sure,
...Dr. Moss, my goodness.
So, I also heard from some of
your fellow civil rights veterans that
you knew a lot about the founding of SNCC .
because SNCC was part of. So, all of
the these groups have this adult student Liaison Committee,
The Atlanta Student Movement
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Corps. All of these monumental groups
were all coming out of this same brain trust
of folks. [Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] The best person to give you
the back story of this would be our friend
Uh, Lonnie king. Dr. King and SCLC funded
the meeting for the founding of SNCC,
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
which brought together all of the sit
in principles. The various HBCUs and representatives
thereof. And persons like Lonnie King, Maurice
Dillard, the late Ruby Doris Smith and Herschel Sullivan,
Marian Wright Edelman,
Julian Bond, and Dr. Maryanne Smith .
and Ruby Doris Smith,
Just to name a few,
became a vital part of the creation of SNCC.
I did not go to the founding meeting.
The Reverend A.D. Williams, King, and
myself went to various business people in Atlanta
to solicit funds to help finance
the trip to North Carolina where SNCC was founded.
And the first south wide or Southeast major conference
after the founding was held in Atlanta.
One of the keynote speakers was the late Lillian Smith.
I shall never forget her address.
She talked about trying to build
a nation with
worn out confederate bills, money.
And she gave the story
of discovering, along with her brother,
a trunk in their back yard
as children that had been buried for years.
They were out, doing the child's treasure hunt,
Children's treasure hunt.
And they somehow came across
this trunk that was filled with confederate money.
And each one grabbed a handful of the money
and ran to the store for the first time.
they were going to buy all of
the candy and whatever that they wanted.
And the gentleman at the store said,
"you can't use this."
So, her brother ran back to the house, to
the trunk and got an arm full of confederate money.
And the man had to explain to him that
this money is of no value.
You cannot buy any goods here."
And she said, "we cannot buy a future with
discredited confederacy, confederate bills."
Some people are today trying to
recreate the future of America on confederate money.
Confederate money mixed with Neo-Nazi currency.
and I wish that
our president could understand that this is a dead currency.
and we need a living spirit and ideals and principles,
and moral presuppositions to
build a future for
our children and our children's children.
[Interviewer] I wanted to ask you too,
before, before we end, you
all put your bodies on the line in 1960.
And in 2017, we are having to do that
again. As a mentor and a reverend and a leader.
what would be a piece of advice you would give
to young people who want
to resist and who want to make
sure that our future
is not based off of confederate bills.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Two or three things.
I think in communicating
with our children and our children's children
In order to participate effectively in transformation,
preparation is absolutely necessary.
It is empty rhetoric to talk
about revolution without preparation.
Preparation precedes transformation,
and a part of that preparation must
be some understanding of history. Of the past.
without getting stuck in the past,
And it requires a foundation upon which you stand,
move, speak, and act.
That's why I hold up
forever an appeal, human rights.
And if anyone should read this appeal,
they will discover that student leaders representing
the entire Atlanta University connections develop this.
And this was another thing that made
our student movement unique.
This document was the articulation
on of one: why we're going to sit-in,
why we need to sit-in,
and the principles upon which we stand
as we sit-in. So, let us tell you.
but if you don't want to listen to us, read the document,
It had such an impact that the governor of Georgia,
who at that time was Ernest
Vandiver, called a press conference to criticize our document .
and even said in the press conference,
"I read that document supposedly written,
purported to be written by students,
but it sounds so much
like the literature coming out of Moscow."
Now, that was an insult, but also a boost.
Why do I say that? He gave
the document publicity and
exposure that we did not have the resources to give,
although the adults in the community helped us
publish the document in local and national media,
but he turned a special kind of beam and gave to
us unintended and unexpected exposure ,
trying to denigrate the document.
He lifted it up ,
and that happens. If the cause is righteous
and I believe when
the principles and techniques are non violent,
that should never be forgotten.
And if you look at the five to seven points in the document,
you will discover that everyone
is relevant this very hour .
in terms of the continuing struggle.
We ought to have a platform,
a foundation, a moral foundation upon which we
stand if we're going to be
successful and fulfilling in the struggle.
And from that foundation,
principles ought to be articulated That can feed,
enhance, inform, and inspire generations. not yet born.
Dr. Las, [Interviewer] Welcome Dr. Moss and thank you for spending time with us.
[Moss] Thank you. [Interviewer] and we'll come back to the well of your deep knowledge
Again, and ask, I'm sure, to talk about some other things.
One of the things that I didn't
want to be remiss in saying
was I read Governor
Vandiver's. I read the transcript of that press conference .
and as a teacher ,
and as a mentor to my own students,
one of the things that struck me that he
also said was that
no college student could have written that document .
and that's how little he thought
about the young people in Georgia in college.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] And when he said, "no college student, no college student,
students," he did not realize that he had thrown
a bomb of disrespect
and a lack of faith in all college students.
[Interviewer] Right. And I think he could
never have thought that those words that he felt were
so condescending would have been so important
in lifting the
exact opposite of what he wanted.
And he most likely didn't have
a college degree himself Did he?
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] I think he did. So, it
was really an indictment against himself.
[Interviewer] Absolutely. It absolutely was.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] One thing I would like to lift
up has to do with the uniqueness,
the preparation, and positioning
of the Atlanta Student Movement.
Here you have Morehouse,
Spelman, Clark, Atlanta University, Maurice Brown,
and the interdenominational Theological Center,
all in walking distance of each other.
and with Atlanta University, there was a possibility of
cross registration and the interchanging
of subject and faculty.
No center in the world had that kind of
geographical and academic positioning.
Which means that you could have a young man
at in Morehouse with a sister at
Spelman out of the same house.
And you did a cousin at Morris Brown,
a mother on the faculty at Clark and a pastor at ITC.
How unique, How special.
And if I wanted to, you know, mount the pulpit,
I would say only God can present such circumstances,
but we have to grasp them and make of them something
unique and special. So, without boasting.
the Atlanta Sit-In movement was unique.
and joining with other student movements
Quickly, Nashville had a unique period of preparation
and some significant historic breakthroughs
as all of the movements did, the individual movements.
But no center anywhere in the world had the history,
the location, and the contiguous arrangement
that the student sit-in movement in Atlanta has.
had. And that's not an overstatement or an exaggeration,
It simply lifts up what can happen.
One: because of. And two: in spite of.
[Interviewer] Thank you so much for spending time with us today.
[Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.] Thank you. [Interviewer] I appreciate you so much.
Thank you, again.