Transcripts For CSPAN3 Oral Histories Courtland Cox 20240712

Coordinating committee and taking part in the 1963 march on washington. Mister courtland also served in the second terri general of 1974 six pan african congress. I was born in new york in harlem in 1941 and my mother moved me and my sister to the west indies to trinidad where my grandmother and our family lived. Four years later, 1945, i stayed in trinidad from 1945 to 1952 and then i came back to new york after my grandmother died in 1952 and lived in harlem for a couple of years and then moved to the bronx. I intended Catholic School, st. Helenas and then, you know, went from well actually Grammar School which was actually an interesting thing because it was african all African American nuns and then i went to st. Helenas and then went to Howard University. My mother sent me to Catholic School because, you know, at that point it cost a ten dollars a month, which was, you know, serious money in 1952 and 1954, but also she wanted to make sure that i had the best education that she could get. At that point, she was not too well sold on public schools. I grew up in the projects mostly in new york and at that time, you could see a lot of the issues that we see today in the fifties. You know a lot of people were doing drugs, mostly marijuana and heroin. Of all the people that i grew up with, my peer group, probably only three of us graduated from high school, my sister, myself and one other. The reason i was not impacted, i think, was because at that time i spent in trinidad where education was stressed in my family. I can look back and see all my cousins and the numerous, i mean women have paid phds, the men have been accomplished in education and it was a strong presence. I mean there was no assumption that you would not go to college, it was assumed that you did. Your mother, my mother said that your cousins are doing x, why enzi and we expect to see you. Meaning the expectation was deep in internal. When i left st. Helenas, whats interesting is when i got to st. Helenas, there are only for African Americans in the school. By the second, here i was by myself. So that was quite an interesting thing and during that time in the bronx because there was a sense of isolation. One of the things that i felt in that time was i will go to school but as i was coming home, i would hide my books because i would try to i kind of lived in both worlds. The world of going to school and the world of being with people i mean it was very interesting. Young people i grew up with, my peer group, because i had an accent, because i had a different history, they had a lot of respect for me. They respected i was different in the sense that i would go to school and i was and trying to do different things. They just thought i was different and that is fine. I had some space because of that one. Can you say what about your sister . My sisters lorraine cox and she, as i said, she is the youngest sister by two and a half years. That said, you know, my father, i think the last time i saw him, i might have been ten years old. I did not see him he was not a major character in my life. You know, but my sister is still working in the health. She became a registered nurse. Went to medical school for a while, but had some issues. How did you get your attention pointed towards howard . My cousin went to howard. My house was the stop for all my relatives coming to the United States. My mother was the head of the Family Branch here, so everybody came here. So, my cousin, erskine, who was a little older, but he came to go to howard. And he was, maybe in his late 20s, maybe early 30s. He came here. He spent maybe two and a half years and went to medical school, became a doctor, ob gyn. My view is, okay if he is doing it, i might as well do it. At that time, you could go. I have not figured out what i was going to do. At that time you could take a test. You didnt have to take the sats, stuff like that you could just go take the test. I got on the bus, and came down to washington by myself, took the test, went back to new york and i passed the exam and they said, hey, why dont you come on down . At that time, tuition at Howard University was 7. 50 a basic credit. Basically you could save a little over 100, get your room, board was 40. I worked at the post office and save money to go to school. Were you a political adolescent at all . In your High School Years . Not political, but i was aware. I was part of two or three discussions. The segregation of race was much more pervasive in terms of peoples assumptions of what you could do, the barriers that existed, and so forth. So there was always discussion of that, kids who were 14 and 15. I think black people were very aware at 14 and 15 of what is going on in society. And we had a group of older guys at that point, it was maybe in the 20s. They would talk about the music. They will talk about culture. They would talk about there was a sense of culture in history that was delivered by these older guys that gave me some sense of that. In terms of politics, no, i was aware of what was going on but also of other kinds of things but no organized kinds of political political discussions, no. Tell me what you encountered what you gotta howard . What the campus was like . What was your sense of what you were going to do was . How did you settle in . I didnt have a clear sense of what i was going to do. I did have a sense of right and wrong and kind of was impacted by what was going on, beginning to go on in the south, particularly with emmett till. Back to the political question, i was very much of where of what was going on with emmett till. I was very much aware of what was going on in montgomery. I was just aware of it and i had a sense of it but not, you know, any great depth in terms of understanding. When i got to howard fair, was places all over the place. I mean washington was a very segregated city at the time, whether you are talking about housing, whether you were talking about black and white heads in the Washington Post, whether you were talking about the police department, whether you were talking about trying close on in the various department stores, all those things existed. I was faced with it in a way i was not faced with it in new york. Also, at that point, there were citizens. Father was a small group of people that decided to do things in washington and we formed the nonviolent action group. Some were the people who later went on to really be were all part of that. We did two things. We did sympathetic actions for the things going on in the south, but we did we went out to the Eastern Shore of maryland and demonstrated their. s michael, who was in school with me at the time, was famous for helping organize these demonstrations because he would promise, okay, we are going to go demonstrate but we got a great party after the demonstrations. Young people wanted to do that. Some other things that we did at howard, i mean rfk stadium when the red skins where here, we picketed because there were no African American football players. Wrote 40, which was segregated, the root from washington to new york, we were involved in those demonstrations. We worked with Julius Hobson who was a core senior we were his shock troops. I mean julius was older than we were about when he wanted a demonstration, he will call on us to be the shock troops. We did other things at howard. We had the outside things that we did in attempt to demonstrations but we also created a project of awareness. Project awareness the first three things that we did and i will never forget them. The first was a debate between reston and malcolm x on the question of segregation versus integration. The second was a debate with Norman Thomas and herman khan on the question of thermal nuclear warfare. The third was a symposium with jim, ill see davis, moderated by sterling brown and for the after party, sydney points yay flew in just to see what the boys were doing. For people our age at that time, we were whatever we were. The other thing that was also clear, we were also on student council. Four he was a treasure the student council, carmichael was in the student council, student government. The other thing who was a member ran the newspaper and got great awards for the quality of the newspaper. So we function at, you know, externally in terms of demonstrations but in terms of howard, in terms of people who could organize and do things, we were there. We were in the leadership of it. We were also encouraged by a lot of professors because they thought they adopted us as their children, particularly sterling brown. He would invite us to his house. He would have discussions. He would talk to us about the voice. He would talk to us about other people we have heard about. He would talk he would not only play at his house, the jazz music, or the blues, he would come to our dormitory and talk about the history, he would talk about the poetry. We had others. We had comrade snowden, we had other professors. We had others who just thought we were doing what they would like to do and they try to give us all the encouragement that they could. Tell me about about this group in your role to all these other folks you mentioned. It was really run by three people, three large egos. Ed brown, stokely carmichael, and myself, and i think, you know, people looked to us in terms of theyou know, in terms of leadership issues. I did a lot of stuff on the project awareness stuff in terms of organization and pulling it together. Also a lot of stuff on the demonstrations and so forth. I did not do so much with the student council, did not do too much on the student newspaper. Tell me about how so many of you, deep in your engagement with sncc . At that point, sncc nearly days was a student non violating coordinating committee. It was really a coordination of student groups across the country. Nag was one of the student groups across the country. Nashville was another. Atlanta was another. So, we sat in. I sat on the coordinating counsel for sncc. I was on the executive committee at some point to help pull the organization together. Did you travel to atlanta . Yes. It used to be going down on highway 29. I remember gas was . 29 a gallon. I could not drive, but i would drive down there. Gas was 29 cents a gallon, cigarettes were . 20 a pack. Did you smoke . I used to smoke until 1971 and i was on my way to africa. And i saw i was at Laguardia Airport and i saw that cigarettes had gotten to 70 cents a pack in the machine. In i said, i know where this is going. Its time for me to end this conversation. So i stopped smoking. Are there things that stand out vividly from your memory in those early trips . The sncc meetings or the trips . Both would be very interesting but i think the sncc meetings. Interesting. The meetings and the destruction discussions were interminable. And we talked about everything. I think probably the thing that is most important as i think about i just thought about this lately you know, most of the young people were asking why, and been given the basis, given the kinds of things they faced, they were asking why. At the sncc meetings, you thought about change and you are asking why not . It seems to me the difference and the real genius of the young people we are talking 17 to 22 of that group was that we move from asking why the situation existed the way it did to talking about why not change it in a way that we should be living . And once you cross that barrier and dont feel you have to ask those who created the situation to make the change for you then you are free. I think those conversations, the 17, the 22yearold, the intellectual thought was broken. The discussion about where we should be going, what we should be doing, and so forth, were limitless. It did not strike me then, but it strikes me now. Also looking back in that context you mentioned that your peer group in the bronx saw you could except you as someone who is somehow a little bit different. Yes. Was there any parallel then to your experience inside the group of young activists inside sncc . Did you feel that your personal history distinguished you in some way that would matter to the conversations, perspectives, your philosophies . I didnt think so but there was always this west indian discussion. And even appeared in time renews week magazine where people considered people like still coolly or myself, you know, to be quote, have a different view because we came from environments that might have been a little less restrictive. I never bought into that. Tell me about the malcolm x debate. It was amazing. It was amazing. They had just built the auditorium at Howard University. The capacity was 1500. Leading up to it, we tried to get the professor who was the head of the government to moderate the debate. I am not going to say his name. He thought it was beneath him to have malcolm x at Howard University. We went to emmett dorsey, a big bear of a man who would say that racism in america is architectonic to the constitution of the United States and he would point to the 3 5 clause. He agreed to moderate the debate. We had a dinner before the debate with malcolm and professor dorsey was talking and malcolm said, professor, i think we better let you speak tonight because you have much more information than anybody in this room, which was really true. We got to the debate, malcolm had maybe about 300 of his followers in front. Byron gets up and he speaks first. Each participant has 30 minutes. He takes 15 minutes and he said, you always hear my point of view through the press, through everything, i now want to give malcolm 15 of my minutes to help to give him to present. And malcolm was a dynamite speaker. The thing that struck me, if you listen to the grassroots message, the speech that he gave i had not heard this is 1961. I had heard it. He would tell a joke or Something Like that and when he did that, it was the discipline was phenomenal. What is this . I will tell you from that debate, people at howard saw us different. That we could bring malcolm x and rustin, 50 people were pounding on the door the whole night trying to get in. Because that was a big auditorium. We broguht a kind of pizzazz. People look at us totally different after that. Hey, these guys have something we dont have. That gave us a little cachet that we probably would not have had ordinarily. We took a short break. Early on, what was your how did you gauge the prospects of substantial, true kind of structural change through the non violent protest strategies that were emerging through sncc . We had big debate about that. We had the National Group had one view. The howard group had another. The National Group believed in nonviolence as a philosophy and a way of life. John is probably the poster child for that. Diane nash. Jim lawson. Those guys. People at howard, we viewed nonviolence as a tactic. One of the things that the nonviolent peoples philosophy, those people, they feel that you can appeal to mens hearts. My view, which i said to them, you might as well appeal to their livers because they are both organs of the body. There was nothing to that. You did not engage in nonviolence because the otherside had overwhelming force. There was not a sense that the other side would do the right thing if you told them because at the end of the day, the other side knew what it was doing to you better than you did. So its not that they did not know what they were doing. They wanted to do it. So, we had huge, huge i mean, that was a source of early tension. I mean early, 1961, 1962. We did not believe in nonviolence as a philosophy. A parallel question, in the early years especially when things heat up in the south, what was your involving in the sense of what you might be able to expect from the federal government . Slim and none. I think there were individuals, particularly john doerr, particularly Burke Marshall with these civil rights division, who were very helpful, but there was a story. The house was bombed in macomb. I think this was 1963, 1964. Maybe 1964. We went down there. You were in mississippi. We were in mississippi. I am sorry. The fbi was there. They said to us, look, dont make any mistake about it. We are here to protect the evidence. We are not here to guard you or protect you. Ok, that is first. Then the guy said to us, look how many guns do you have . And we said, we dont have any guns. He said, well, ive got two and im scared to death. He had two issues. First, their mandate was limited because of both the local political issues, which affected the federal political issues, and at the end of the day, most of these guys as individuals that they would be overwhelmed. So, you know, we tried to communicate to the federal government as much as we could communicate and tried to, in certain circumstances, try to do that, but many people in sncc, including myself, felt that most of those agents who came from the south were of the south and therefore sympathetic, not to us, but the communities they lived in. A few sat in at Robert Kennedys office. Oh yes. Khan and tom. You really done your research. Can you recall that . Yes. It was funny. We went there and we went to kennedys office and i think they do know what to do. Basically they just said, okay, just leave him there. Later in the afternoon, they were going to come and move us to the side of the building. So, butch khan called the press from kennedys office and included the soviet press. Then they came at the end of the day and they were, you know, we went limping and they were dragging us out. As they were dragging us out, they probably got maybe 50, 60 feet down the hall, stokely says, wait a minute, wait a minute. I forgot something in the office. So, he gets up, goes and gets the stuff in the office. Goes back to exactly where he was and said ok. So they took us out of the office and they say, goodbye, see you. So thats what i remember about it. Its interesting one of the things about doing these interviews in 2011 is the emotional mood about all this has shifted so much. When you recall these teams with a smile and yet you were there for what were deadly serious reasons . We were very serious. We thought that the Kennedy Administration first of all we thought the Kennedy Administration, particularly the way they dealt with Catholic School<\/a>, st. Helenas and then, you know, went from well actually Grammar School<\/a> which was actually an interesting thing because it was african all African American<\/a> nuns and then i went to st. Helenas and then went to Howard University<\/a>. My mother sent me to Catholic School<\/a> because, you know, at that point it cost a ten dollars a month, which was, you know, serious money in 1952 and 1954, but also she wanted to make sure that i had the best education that she could get. At that point, she was not too well sold on public schools. I grew up in the projects mostly in new york and at that time, you could see a lot of the issues that we see today in the fifties. You know a lot of people were doing drugs, mostly marijuana and heroin. Of all the people that i grew up with, my peer group, probably only three of us graduated from high school, my sister, myself and one other. The reason i was not impacted, i think, was because at that time i spent in trinidad where education was stressed in my family. I can look back and see all my cousins and the numerous, i mean women have paid phds, the men have been accomplished in education and it was a strong presence. I mean there was no assumption that you would not go to college, it was assumed that you did. Your mother, my mother said that your cousins are doing x, why enzi and we expect to see you. Meaning the expectation was deep in internal. When i left st. Helenas, whats interesting is when i got to st. Helenas, there are only for African American<\/a>s in the school. By the second, here i was by myself. So that was quite an interesting thing and during that time in the bronx because there was a sense of isolation. One of the things that i felt in that time was i will go to school but as i was coming home, i would hide my books because i would try to i kind of lived in both worlds. The world of going to school and the world of being with people i mean it was very interesting. Young people i grew up with, my peer group, because i had an accent, because i had a different history, they had a lot of respect for me. They respected i was different in the sense that i would go to school and i was and trying to do different things. They just thought i was different and that is fine. I had some space because of that one. Can you say what about your sister . My sisters lorraine cox and she, as i said, she is the youngest sister by two and a half years. That said, you know, my father, i think the last time i saw him, i might have been ten years old. I did not see him he was not a major character in my life. You know, but my sister is still working in the health. She became a registered nurse. Went to medical school for a while, but had some issues. How did you get your attention pointed towards howard . My cousin went to howard. My house was the stop for all my relatives coming to the United States<\/a>. My mother was the head of the Family Branch<\/a> here, so everybody came here. So, my cousin, erskine, who was a little older, but he came to go to howard. And he was, maybe in his late 20s, maybe early 30s. He came here. He spent maybe two and a half years and went to medical school, became a doctor, ob gyn. My view is, okay if he is doing it, i might as well do it. At that time, you could go. I have not figured out what i was going to do. At that time you could take a test. You didnt have to take the sats, stuff like that you could just go take the test. I got on the bus, and came down to washington by myself, took the test, went back to new york and i passed the exam and they said, hey, why dont you come on down . At that time, tuition at Howard University<\/a> was 7. 50 a basic credit. Basically you could save a little over 100, get your room, board was 40. I worked at the post office and save money to go to school. Were you a political adolescent at all . In your High School Years<\/a> . Not political, but i was aware. I was part of two or three discussions. The segregation of race was much more pervasive in terms of peoples assumptions of what you could do, the barriers that existed, and so forth. So there was always discussion of that, kids who were 14 and 15. I think black people were very aware at 14 and 15 of what is going on in society. And we had a group of older guys at that point, it was maybe in the 20s. They would talk about the music. They will talk about culture. They would talk about there was a sense of culture in history that was delivered by these older guys that gave me some sense of that. In terms of politics, no, i was aware of what was going on but also of other kinds of things but no organized kinds of political political discussions, no. Tell me what you encountered what you gotta howard . What the campus was like . What was your sense of what you were going to do was . How did you settle in . I didnt have a clear sense of what i was going to do. I did have a sense of right and wrong and kind of was impacted by what was going on, beginning to go on in the south, particularly with emmett till. Back to the political question, i was very much of where of what was going on with emmett till. I was very much aware of what was going on in montgomery. I was just aware of it and i had a sense of it but not, you know, any great depth in terms of understanding. When i got to howard fair, was places all over the place. I mean washington was a very segregated city at the time, whether you are talking about housing, whether you were talking about black and white heads in the Washington Post<\/a>, whether you were talking about the police department, whether you were talking about trying close on in the various department stores, all those things existed. I was faced with it in a way i was not faced with it in new york. Also, at that point, there were citizens. Father was a small group of people that decided to do things in washington and we formed the nonviolent action group. Some were the people who later went on to really be were all part of that. We did two things. We did sympathetic actions for the things going on in the south, but we did we went out to the Eastern Shore<\/a> of maryland and demonstrated their. s michael, who was in school with me at the time, was famous for helping organize these demonstrations because he would promise, okay, we are going to go demonstrate but we got a great party after the demonstrations. Young people wanted to do that. Some other things that we did at howard, i mean rfk stadium when the red skins where here, we picketed because there were no African American<\/a> football players. Wrote 40, which was segregated, the root from washington to new york, we were involved in those demonstrations. We worked with Julius Hobson<\/a> who was a core senior we were his shock troops. I mean julius was older than we were about when he wanted a demonstration, he will call on us to be the shock troops. We did other things at howard. We had the outside things that we did in attempt to demonstrations but we also created a project of awareness. Project awareness the first three things that we did and i will never forget them. The first was a debate between reston and malcolm x on the question of segregation versus integration. The second was a debate with Norman Thomas<\/a> and herman khan on the question of thermal nuclear warfare. The third was a symposium with jim, ill see davis, moderated by sterling brown and for the after party, sydney points yay flew in just to see what the boys were doing. For people our age at that time, we were whatever we were. The other thing that was also clear, we were also on student council. Four he was a treasure the student council, carmichael was in the student council, student government. The other thing who was a member ran the newspaper and got great awards for the quality of the newspaper. So we function at, you know, externally in terms of demonstrations but in terms of howard, in terms of people who could organize and do things, we were there. We were in the leadership of it. We were also encouraged by a lot of professors because they thought they adopted us as their children, particularly sterling brown. He would invite us to his house. He would have discussions. He would talk to us about the voice. He would talk to us about other people we have heard about. He would talk he would not only play at his house, the jazz music, or the blues, he would come to our dormitory and talk about the history, he would talk about the poetry. We had others. We had comrade snowden, we had other professors. We had others who just thought we were doing what they would like to do and they try to give us all the encouragement that they could. Tell me about about this group in your role to all these other folks you mentioned. It was really run by three people, three large egos. Ed brown, stokely carmichael, and myself, and i think, you know, people looked to us in terms of theyou know, in terms of leadership issues. I did a lot of stuff on the project awareness stuff in terms of organization and pulling it together. Also a lot of stuff on the demonstrations and so forth. I did not do so much with the student council, did not do too much on the student newspaper. Tell me about how so many of you, deep in your engagement with sncc . At that point, sncc nearly days was a student non violating coordinating committee. It was really a coordination of student groups across the country. Nag was one of the student groups across the country. Nashville was another. Atlanta was another. So, we sat in. I sat on the coordinating counsel for sncc. I was on the executive committee at some point to help pull the organization together. Did you travel to atlanta . Yes. It used to be going down on highway 29. I remember gas was . 29 a gallon. I could not drive, but i would drive down there. Gas was 29 cents a gallon, cigarettes were . 20 a pack. Did you smoke . I used to smoke until 1971 and i was on my way to africa. And i saw i was at Laguardia Airport<\/a> and i saw that cigarettes had gotten to 70 cents a pack in the machine. In i said, i know where this is going. Its time for me to end this conversation. So i stopped smoking. Are there things that stand out vividly from your memory in those early trips . The sncc meetings or the trips . Both would be very interesting but i think the sncc meetings. Interesting. The meetings and the destruction discussions were interminable. And we talked about everything. I think probably the thing that is most important as i think about i just thought about this lately you know, most of the young people were asking why, and been given the basis, given the kinds of things they faced, they were asking why. At the sncc meetings, you thought about change and you are asking why not . It seems to me the difference and the real genius of the young people we are talking 17 to 22 of that group was that we move from asking why the situation existed the way it did to talking about why not change it in a way that we should be living . And once you cross that barrier and dont feel you have to ask those who created the situation to make the change for you then you are free. I think those conversations, the 17, the 22yearold, the intellectual thought was broken. The discussion about where we should be going, what we should be doing, and so forth, were limitless. It did not strike me then, but it strikes me now. Also looking back in that context you mentioned that your peer group in the bronx saw you could except you as someone who is somehow a little bit different. Yes. Was there any parallel then to your experience inside the group of young activists inside sncc . Did you feel that your personal history distinguished you in some way that would matter to the conversations, perspectives, your philosophies . I didnt think so but there was always this west indian discussion. And even appeared in time renews week magazine where people considered people like still coolly or myself, you know, to be quote, have a different view because we came from environments that might have been a little less restrictive. I never bought into that. Tell me about the malcolm x debate. It was amazing. It was amazing. They had just built the auditorium at Howard University<\/a>. The capacity was 1500. Leading up to it, we tried to get the professor who was the head of the government to moderate the debate. I am not going to say his name. He thought it was beneath him to have malcolm x at Howard University<\/a>. We went to emmett dorsey, a big bear of a man who would say that racism in america is architectonic to the constitution of the United States<\/a> and he would point to the 3 5 clause. He agreed to moderate the debate. We had a dinner before the debate with malcolm and professor dorsey was talking and malcolm said, professor, i think we better let you speak tonight because you have much more information than anybody in this room, which was really true. We got to the debate, malcolm had maybe about 300 of his followers in front. Byron gets up and he speaks first. Each participant has 30 minutes. He takes 15 minutes and he said, you always hear my point of view through the press, through everything, i now want to give malcolm 15 of my minutes to help to give him to present. And malcolm was a dynamite speaker. The thing that struck me, if you listen to the grassroots message, the speech that he gave i had not heard this is 1961. I had heard it. He would tell a joke or Something Like<\/a> that and when he did that, it was the discipline was phenomenal. What is this . I will tell you from that debate, people at howard saw us different. That we could bring malcolm x and rustin, 50 people were pounding on the door the whole night trying to get in. Because that was a big auditorium. We broguht a kind of pizzazz. People look at us totally different after that. Hey, these guys have something we dont have. That gave us a little cachet that we probably would not have had ordinarily. We took a short break. Early on, what was your how did you gauge the prospects of substantial, true kind of structural change through the non violent protest strategies that were emerging through sncc . We had big debate about that. We had the National Group<\/a> had one view. The howard group had another. The National Group<\/a> believed in nonviolence as a philosophy and a way of life. John is probably the poster child for that. Diane nash. Jim lawson. Those guys. People at howard, we viewed nonviolence as a tactic. One of the things that the nonviolent peoples philosophy, those people, they feel that you can appeal to mens hearts. My view, which i said to them, you might as well appeal to their livers because they are both organs of the body. There was nothing to that. You did not engage in nonviolence because the otherside had overwhelming force. There was not a sense that the other side would do the right thing if you told them because at the end of the day, the other side knew what it was doing to you better than you did. So its not that they did not know what they were doing. They wanted to do it. So, we had huge, huge i mean, that was a source of early tension. I mean early, 1961, 1962. We did not believe in nonviolence as a philosophy. A parallel question, in the early years especially when things heat up in the south, what was your involving in the sense of what you might be able to expect from the federal government . Slim and none. I think there were individuals, particularly john doerr, particularly Burke Marshall<\/a> with these civil rights division, who were very helpful, but there was a story. The house was bombed in macomb. I think this was 1963, 1964. Maybe 1964. We went down there. You were in mississippi. We were in mississippi. I am sorry. The fbi was there. They said to us, look, dont make any mistake about it. We are here to protect the evidence. We are not here to guard you or protect you. Ok, that is first. Then the guy said to us, look how many guns do you have . And we said, we dont have any guns. He said, well, ive got two and im scared to death. He had two issues. First, their mandate was limited because of both the local political issues, which affected the federal political issues, and at the end of the day, most of these guys as individuals that they would be overwhelmed. So, you know, we tried to communicate to the federal government as much as we could communicate and tried to, in certain circumstances, try to do that, but many people in sncc, including myself, felt that most of those agents who came from the south were of the south and therefore sympathetic, not to us, but the communities they lived in. A few sat in at Robert Kennedys<\/a> office. Oh yes. Khan and tom. You really done your research. Can you recall that . Yes. It was funny. We went there and we went to kennedys office and i think they do know what to do. Basically they just said, okay, just leave him there. Later in the afternoon, they were going to come and move us to the side of the building. So, butch khan called the press from kennedys office and included the soviet press. Then they came at the end of the day and they were, you know, we went limping and they were dragging us out. As they were dragging us out, they probably got maybe 50, 60 feet down the hall, stokely says, wait a minute, wait a minute. I forgot something in the office. So, he gets up, goes and gets the stuff in the office. Goes back to exactly where he was and said ok. So they took us out of the office and they say, goodbye, see you. So thats what i remember about it. Its interesting one of the things about doing these interviews in 2011 is the emotional mood about all this has shifted so much. When you recall these teams with a smile and yet you were there for what were deadly serious reasons . We were very serious. We thought that the Kennedy Administration<\/a> first of all we thought the Kennedy Administration<\/a>, particularly the way they dealt with Martin Luther<\/a> king earlier, was basically an opportunistic approach to the things. We thought Bobby Kennedy<\/a> and the Justice Department<\/a> was not being very serious. They were also very opportunistic and had a view they would only do what they were pushed to do, even though the law of the land, which changed in 1954 would be on the side of ending segregation. They went into the do not disturb approach, the do not cause any political trouble for my brother approach. So we felt that at the end of the today they were the all about themselves are not making the country a better place for everybody. Two things, obviously you have given many interviews over the years. Two episodes are often the focus of a lot of attention. I want to sort of take them up together, in some ways they have a relation. You can comment and if you agree. The struggle of john lewis to speak in august of 1963 and a year later the Atlantic City<\/a> struggle at the Democratic National<\/a> convention. In both those instances, i think of them as having to do with that forceful and idealistic in quite hopeful push, really bumping up against some very, very rugged power. I think Atlantic City<\/a> had a much more profound impact then march on washington. The march on washington, i was the representative for sncc, the steering committee. And for whatever reasons at this point i cant remember i passed out johns speech before the march. To the price . To the press. I am assuming i wanted to promote johna speech. That is why he was doing that. Then we were at the march and john we get a call. The archbishop says he is not going to participate in the march on washington if the criticism of kennedys administration and the whole reference about marching through the south it was a ruse, because the real, they did not want the Kennedy Administration<\/a> criticized. And, you know, we, at that point, when i say we john lewis, jim forman, and myself. The archbishop came to us. And we said you can tell the archbishop to go straight to hell to the changes to the speech. Randall said i know, you know, he gave us our profit but he said, look, i have worked since 1941 to make this happen. It is important that the coalition is held together. Out of respect for a. Philip randolph, we went in the back of the lincoln memorial, jim foreman, john lewis, mildred foreman and myself and we changed johns speech. The way that was perceived in we changed john speech. The way that was perceived in sncc was we caved in. The criticism was individual to us from the sncc people. It was not the broader society. I think Atlantic City<\/a> was a lot different. People worked all summer. They faced tremendous hostilities. They thought that the rules they played by the rules that they were supposed to playing and everybody was engaged in that. We went to Atlantic City<\/a> with the sense that if, again, if you presented the facts to the nation then it would make a difference. The first thing, the first clue was when fanny was speaking, Lyndon Johnson<\/a> called a nonserious press conference to say that today is tuesday, ok . And to take her off the air. In the bowels of Atlantic City<\/a> convention center, bob moses, johnny conn, all of us, people were scrubbed, put on suits and ties. Some of us had not had ties on for some time. But we went around and we were able to pigeonhole enough people to support the Credentials Committee<\/a> level. At least at the Credentials Committee<\/a> level. Then, when it was known that we had enough enough representatives, Lyndon Bains Johnson<\/a> really started acting ugly. He called Hubert Humphrey<\/a> and he told him, if you want the vice presidency, you better stop these people. He called people who were up for judge ships. He said, if you dont do this, you are through booking. We had the list of people. And congressman, whose name i will not put out here at this point. Came to us and i remember, bob moses and i were in a meeting. And the congressman asked us for the list of people who were supportive. Because he said what he wanted to do was show lyndon bands that he had in fact, the kind of support and therefore to be able to move the agenda in our direction. Bob moses just looked at him and said, and i said to bob, do you think hes going to steal the list . Bob hesitate a little more and then he said he gave him the list. What that congressman did was use that so to get the Johnson Administration<\/a> to go after each one of these people to get them to capitulate. This was a sufficient minority. Sufficient minority to do a minority report. This congressman took the list, i wouldnt use the word betrayed but it was close. At that point, we had worked the whole time. We had basically played by the rules that were established and when it came out that they had collapsed the minority, the group of minority representatives, the representatives who would have participated in the minority report, what happened was they then offered two seats in a balcony somewhere. Two seats on the floor and then the others could be sitting on the balcony. And people on our side, i would say the National Council<\/a> of churches, the aflcio, Martin Luther<\/a>, the naacp. Joseph rawl. Everybody said you should accept this. We said okay. It was bobs idea. We met in a church and he said okay, if you want them to accepted, make your presentation. They presented, they talked about it, and the people said we didnt come up here for this pretense. They said, we came here believing that if you played by the rules, in fact, the rules would be observed. So that, it wasnt only the Johnson Administration<\/a>, it wasnt only Hubert Humphrey<\/a>, it was the whole liberal establishment that said no, when it comes to power, these rules dont obtain. At the end of the day, the refusal of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party<\/a> to deal with that socalled compromise. The kind of sense that power prevails, not just the ideals and the things the people espouse, capitalism always trumps democracy. People were able to see, first hand. I was 23 and 64, everybody else was around that and they said hey, this is the way it happens not all that stuff we read in the books. This is the stuff that happened. It wasnt idealism, these were the rules that you put out there this wasnt stuff we thought up. This was what you said the party rules were. And when it came to the deal, this is the way it came down. And then people said, we no longer trust you. I think people then started disengaging from the electoral process, and what people considered foolishness. Lets step back to when you started to go to a convention. And find out what you were anticipating would happen. I think when we started with, we had worked, we created the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party<\/a>, we went to all the counties in mississippi, we held meeting after meeting. The rules of the party said that, in fact, if you did these things, he would be seated, because you would be representing these things and you function by the rules, so that when we went to Atlantic City<\/a>, having functioned by the rules of the Democratic Party<\/a> itself, we expected to be seated. We expected to be the Democratic Party<\/a> in mississippi, and in fact, when we got to Atlantic City<\/a>, we found out the rules had changed. If you would, please, talk about the transition after august 64 to alabama, and the way you thought about widening the project like new approaches to what i think attorney you had used was the unqualified. I think, of all the things i have done, i am most proud, i like what we did their best. The reason we went to that county was to deal with the kind of violence, particularly the shooting. We went to a county that was 80 African American<\/a>s and they were for registered voters. Alabama had a law that allowed you to have a Political Party<\/a> at the county level. It also had rooster which said, for the right, above it. The question then became, how do you achieve political power . And how do you achieve regime change . Because before we were all talking about registering people to vote, we were all talking about if you presented the facts, if you did that and if you played by the rules, then the rules would be supported. And 65, the view was, here are the rules and how do we manipulate them . To achieve our own. We are not taking them to anybody, because we know what that is going to be. We are saying okay, you have an 80 majority. Then you ought to be able to run the county. Officer sheriff, office of county assessor, the tax assessor, county clerk, county court, the judge, the problem was, a lot of people run and they did not read or write and two, and the idea, they didnt know a lot about the offices or the responsibility of the offices. Three, you had to get them to believe they could do it. What we did. Jack manus, who was a research guy in atlanta, who was absolutely brilliant, just absolutely brilliant. We researched the laws. And once we found out that you could have a party in the county level, we could say okay, what does it take to build a party at the county . So we then research the roles and responsibilities of each of the offices. We knew that people were not going to sit down and read law books. So what we did, was a created comic books, which talked about the rules and responsibilities. We got people who would agree to run for sheriff. And we gave them the comic books and we passed the comic books and we put their pictures out there so that people could see them in that particular context. The other thing that we did, was we created a propaganda piece, called mr. Black man. It is a story i developed with jennifer lawson, who is now working with pbs. She did the graphics, i did the text. I used a phrase that i heard from a woman in mississippi. She said, you know, us black people have been using our mouths to do two things. To eat and say yesm. It is now time to say no. I did that to give the impression that we have been doing all kinds of things. We have been eating and saying yes or, and now its time to support mr. Black man. It could be so and so for sheriff, so so for texas or. Our argument was, its no use protesting police brutality. By the sheriff. The way to deal with it is to get a new sheriff who exceeds to your view of the world. So then, we got people to believe. We went on the plantations and obviously, there was a lot of reaction. They threw people out of their houses. Violence and so forth. But what we found in loans county, his name is mr. Jackson, he is a guy who owned his land. He was a guy who was salt of the earth. When you see him, it was like you see him coming out of the earth, he was very strong. And his view was he was quiet, he was not highly educated, but he was very strong. And he gave us his house and he would stay up all night to protect us, with his gun. So that basically are our thinking, in 65, said no more about going to take these rules, youve got to create your own rules. Youve got to assume power. Youve got to now, the discussion is no longer a protest. The discussion is about power. How do you now assume power, given you have the demographic advantage, and how do you move that discussion . You do your research. You now understand how to go about it and basically overtime, convincing people like mr. Hue lift and others, to run for sheriff and others, that we were able to now be able to take over every position in the county. I wrote a pamphlet, i cant find it anymore, i gave away a lot of the stuff that i used to have. It was a pamphlet that i wrote called, paraphrasing a biblical thing, what would it profit a man to gain the vote and not be able to control it . At that point, the discussion of control and organization to move that control, was particularly important. Let me ask a couple things. Let me have you describe you alluded to the atmosphere of violence in that area. Can you say a little more . I know that for example Jonathan Daniels<\/a> yes. He was sprung from jail, just a little bit about the experience of being there and confronting that and observing that. I was not exactly the reason we went in there was to show, after jonathan was killed, and ruby was almost killed, that we were not going to be afraid. So we came in after the, and particularly, people like stokely carmichael, we came in after that to make sure we were not going to be run out. I think for the community, which was there, which is saying we ourselves would live in the community. We would be at risk with you. We had no running water. We had to prime the pump in the morning to get our water. It had one butane gas heater in the living room, and it had a hole in the roof, so when it rained you had to have a pan in your bed so it wouldnt rain on the bid. But, when you wanted to get relief, excuse me for a second lease to go to selma to get a bath or take a shower, to go to the chicken shack, listen to some music and get some fried chicken, and then drive back to the county. But people saw us living there, daytoday, and that gave them comfort that we were serious people and that the kind of violence that was visited upon the county by the people who killed daniels, and almost shot ruby and so forth, we would stand up to it. Our living in the county, living in southwest georgia for mississippi. That was the trademark. We lived where we worked, as opposed to dropping it and dropping. Out how did you deal with that kind of pressure . Fear . I think i always told myself, there is fear there. And you shouldnt be paralyzed by. I remember once, we were driving, i was driving with this young guy, jon jackson, mr. Jacksons young son. And these guys started chasing us with a pick up truck and they had guns. And we were going, we must have been on those roads going 70 80 miles an hour. You tell yourself, that you could deal with it you fantasize all sorts of stuff. For example, i always thought that okay, i could probably get away from somebody who had a gun, but i had a problem with, in alabama, because i thought they would use bombs. I was more nervous about alabama that i was mississippi, because i thought they would bomb in alabama and shoot in mississippi. And therefore, you kept telling yourself, okay, dont be paralyzed. This is a dangerous situation, dont be paralyzed. Sometimes, i remember, i looked around. And the trial of kollie lee roy will cans, who had shot viola luis. I looked around in the courtroom when i was the only person of color in the whole courtroom. And i started thinking, what were the kids that i went to college with doing . Youre crazy. This is a little dangerous here. When you are in it, you have mechanisms that go into place that dont calculate to the danger or reflect deflect the danger from you. I think, its only with something actually happening to somebody you know that brings it home, i think, when you get outside of it, you think about, that was a little interesting. I think that i was affected. I always try to rationalize it. There were others who were not so lucky. I went through a series of rationalizations. Thats the way i dealt with it let me ask you about the 65, 66 period. Carmichael replaces lewis. Just how you moved through that period. If you could describe it, your perspective on those transitions. You i think that basically, this goes back to Atlantic City<\/a>. The organization was becoming much more militant in the sense that the whole sense. There was always that. In 1962, we had one group who felt the philosophy, another group that felt this was a tactic. Basically, it started getting wider and wider and wider. And most people, john a true believer, felt that you needed to continue to appeal to the people who were in power to change their ways and we started believing less and less in that discussion. That is this is something that wasnt, looking back on the sudden discussion, that it was from the beginning, john had a view about if you talk to people and they do the right thing then other people like that that they would actually do the right thing, because in their hearts they were decent human beings. We didnt believe any of that. At that point, it became a critical point, especially after that experience in Atlantic City<\/a>. Can you say a little bit more specifically about those two transitional moments . One, the decision to expel whites from sncc and when carmichael replaces lewis. I think that a lot of the stuff about the replacement. Carmichael replacing john, stoically had just come out of the county, he had a lot of a lot more energy than john in terms of that. He probably reflected the mood of the black community and a lot of younger people at sncc. And i think john held on to the ways that he knew and his views of how things should be. I think that the country. After the county and the whole discussion of black power, which came at the meredith march, and this whole discussion. The Washington Post<\/a> and the New York Times<\/a> started generating editorials, which said this is a bad thing. Even today, people say the good period of sncc and the bad p eriod of sncc. The good is when sncc was believing in the American Dream<\/a> and whites were involved in it, and the bad period was when sncc did not feel that you know, the people who are making the decisions were ever going to be in their favor, and they needed to look to themselves to move the discussion. I think again, the movement, the whole discussion it was a peg leg bates, to expel, i dont think thats the word to say. I think the basic position of sncc, and jim articulated it best. He said the problem that we face is not in the black community, the problems we face are in the White Community<\/a>, about the way they feel about things. So we think that it is important that the whites who are organizers and sympathetic to us, should go to the White Communities<\/a> and begin to organize in those communities to create sympathetic relationships. The way got characterized was probably unfortunate. But i think that is what people who had been with sncc all this time, particularly the whites, felt that they had a home and therefore getting into this new thing was very difficult. But some, went and did a good job and they found a southern Student Organization<\/a> organizing committee. But the fight that went on, peg leg debates, where i guess i was quoted as saying, race is necessary but not sufficient, Something Like<\/a> that. My sense was that, we were trying to deal with problems, trying to figure out how do we end these barriers. But people started saying, how come you dont love what people anymore . We are facing destruction, at a lot of things, and this discussion of, why dont you like whites anymore, we are seeing to the White Community<\/a>, help us go into the White Community<\/a> to help us make changes there. And so therefore, i think the way it was characterized and the way it is still characterized is unfortunate, but it is what it is. It had the impact of the fairly short order impact which was funding. No question. People coming out and making his statements about it and other people. It cut the fending tremendously. Let me switch to a theme that takes us into one of the dimensions of a widening frame of consideration in this era, vietnam. I want to ask about your participation in stockholm 1966, the war crimes tribunal, Bertrand Russell<\/a>, can you spend some time on the fourth on that for us sometime on that for us . You have done your homework. [laughter] sncc made an early statement on vietnam and the palestinian issues, and the statement on vietnam impacted julian greatly. But the arguments for some of the established Civil Rights Movement<\/a> was that you could only speak on issues of race, you have no right to speak on the issues of vietnam. Now, you have to understand that most of us in sncc, including myself, got wise. Because even before the tribunal piece, the view at sncc was, you want us to fight a war over there, when we are facing this here . So the frame was set in terms of this discussion. So we were invited after a number of statements by the Bertrand Russell<\/a> people, and i was asked to go. Sncc people had gone to north vietnam, charlie cobb and julius lester. I was invited to go, but i declined. But i went over there to represent sncc in the group. I get into london, and i really dont know much about the european scene. And i go to this dinner, sevencourse dinner with all sorts of liquor and stuff like that, and i had just come out of alabama. [laughter] what is all this . And you know you are either going to get too full or too drunk. But it is interesting, at the dinner was Bertrand Russell<\/a>, John Paul Sartre<\/a>, others, all the huge weight of european intellectuals. And what struck me, this may be silly, but both those guys, sartre and Bertrand Russell<\/a>, with such huge egos they were about five foot five inches at best, they were little guys. And the yugoslavian, huge guy. So we get to the thing and we agreed that i would participate. Russell was at the dinner, but not very active, because he was 94 or so. But the real leader was sartre. What strikes me is that sartre is smoking and smoking, would say whatever, and everybody would genuflect. It was sort of like he was the pope blessing everybody. This was in london. So they agreed to have this thing in stockholm. I go to stockholm, first time in stockholm, and it is strange, the weather is up and down, but it is the cleanest place i have ever been, great, clean place. I am sitting next to simone de beauvoir, and they are talking, a colonel from the vietnamese is talking. And what struck me about him is his absolute humility about the war, about the mistakes they have made, the need to change and correct, and so forth. Every time John Paul Sartre<\/a> would say something, simone de beauvoir would turn to me and say, do you understand . I didnt say to myself what i thought, i said yes. Then she said, you comprehend, and i said yes. So then i asked the colonel a series of questions, because remember, they were using pellet bombs. This was when the United States<\/a> started using pellet bombs. So i asked colonel lo, in wars, there are generally institutions that people tend to attack, infrastructure, the economic infrastructure, factories, political infrastructure, the capital and so forth, and i said, it seems to me, in guerrilla warfare you dont have those infrastructures that you can attack. All you have is the people. So do you think that by definition of what you have, that guerrilla warfare between that the only way an industrialized country has two attack against guerrilla warfare is to commit genocide, because you have to attack the people. And he said, yes. She never asked me again, did i comprehend or understand. She was pissed, because i implied that the war the west had to fight, wars of national liberation, had to be wars of genocide. She never asked me another question. [laughter] break. One of the things i found out is, i was put on several lists, mainly fbi and cia. They followed me wherever i went. Whenever i came back to the United States<\/a>, i would be surrounded by agents, and i would say, you just picked me out at random, and they looked at me and checked everything to make sure i had documents and stuff. In 1970, on my way to africa, i was going to london, they stopped me at heathrow, and at that time you didnt have planes going to africa every day. That would not let me in london, so i had to sleep in the airport for two nights, and they took me on armed guard on a plane and took me to africa. You know, at that point i was viewed as an enemy of the state, and was treated as such by both the fbi and cia. The fbi was a little more aggressive, in the sense that, i was going to speak at cornell, and the fbi said to the people who invited me, dont you know who this guy is . Why are you inviting him . So they tried to discourage, i was told that. But i have my fbi files, cia files, and irs files. And when i look at the work the fbi did, as a taxpayer i am ashamed they did such sloppy work. I thought the cia did a little better, but the fbi, they need to pull up their socks. They need to do better work. Yes, the freedom act. You mentioned pellet bombs, what was that . They were called cluster bombs. You have one big bomb that has a lot of little bombs in it, and once those bombs got close to the ground, they would explode, and bb pellets would be in those, so they couldnt destroy a building or anything, they were designed to kill and injure people. We have already touched on, in important ways, the question of where this work is leading. You mentioned that you are closely watched by the government agents, surveillance and national security, but im curious about the development of the effort that culminates in tanzania in 1973. Stokely carmichael and i talked a lot about moving the discussion, because after the Atlantic City<\/a> convention, i began to understand that you have to think much differently, you could not keep asking people who were benefiting from the status quote to change the status quote. And i felt it was important that benefiting from the status quo to change the status quo. And to change our communities and so forth, it was clear to me that there was nothing in the black communities, whether talking about harlem or other places, where you had any kind of economic infrastructure that would make a difference. So rhetorically and politically, it was good to talk about how these communities could defend themselves and do for themselves and so forth. They didnt grow any wheat, they had no agriculture, they had no industry, they had nothing","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia803207.us.archive.org\/17\/items\/CSPAN3_20200730_024400_Oral_Histories_Courtland_Cox\/CSPAN3_20200730_024400_Oral_Histories_Courtland_Cox.thumbs\/CSPAN3_20200730_024400_Oral_Histories_Courtland_Cox_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}