American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Derek Charles Catsam, 1 of 3

. The Morgan decision was part of a process that allowed for the ultimate challenge to segregation on interstate transportation so that she was actually one of a number of people who had been challenging over the years, the various forms of segregation in Jim Crow. And finally hers was the ideal test case because she was a sympathetic figure, her case was such a clear seeming violation of constitutional ideas and so when she brought her case to the Supreme Court, it was the ideal test case for the NAACP which

always wanted to have cases they could win, even if they thought they were right, they had to have the legal foundation to win and she, she fought it through all the way to the Supreme Court and ended up winning and it provided this sort of foundation that allowed the civil rights organizations to say okay, interstate transportation is really an area that we can now challenge frontally. Let me ask you to do that one more time, you can still hear her full name in there, okay, I'm sure, yeah, but just so you kind of vary Irene Morgan and she and you can show it a little bit, but I love it, I love where you ended up, that was great so talk about the -- I don't remember where I am. --decision that, you know, that it led to the Supreme Court, talk about the significance of Irene Morgan's case to the -- Irene Morgan provided a challenge that was necessary for civil rights activists because for years people had been challenging segregation on buses, both local buses and interstate buses, and she provided the ideal case because Irene Morgan was sympathetic, she was clearly traveling between states,

between Virginia and Maryland, she was willing to fight all the way that the NAACP really wanted it, so the Irene Morgan case is vitally important because it allows the civil rights activists to pick up interstate transportation as a theme that they want to to really push and investigate. I want to go go back and one of the things that was really fascinating to me about, about the Freedom Rides is the fact that that the white press, the mainstream press is not there at the beginning so we're at the beginning of the Freedom Rides -- don't go, don't jump ahead to, you know, what happens but we're there at the beginning and talk about the fact that, you know, you know, there I want to give a sense of they're, they're going out on this Freedom Ride, they have no press they have no protection and also that that if you can get all this in the same thing that they're just riding on regular buses with nothing, you know, they're doing this thing,

and this comes after this statement where someone says, you know, that, that some of the some of the other civil rights leaders thought that it was a mistake, thought they might be killed, and, and the idea that they're taking this into the deep south, deep south with no press, no protection, nothing. The Congress of Racial Equality was in many ways flying blind when they headed into the, the Freedom Rides. They had just reorganized the organization, they had decided that this was a good way to make a splash, they didn't even have a formal title for it right away when they started and what it came down to was they decided, well, one of the things that we're gonna do is we're gonna be, we're gonna play this fair, we're gonna do what Gandhi would have done, we are going to let everybody know what we're gonna do, so they wrote letters to the President, they wrote letters to the governors and they wrote letters to the press and they weren't certain what kind of response they would get and when they didn't get much response from the press I think they were surprised and disappointed but on the other hand they didn't get a

response from the Kennedy administration either so I think that they had grown accustomed to realizing that they were going to be flying blind at least early on. Let me ask you the kind of follow up question to that. So, so, so just again tell what they're, the fact, so, so this meant that they were going, you know, in, that they were gonna start these rides anyway with no -- there's no press, there's, there's no there's no reporter from the Washington Post or the New York Times, there's no FBI traveling with them, that they're gonna go to the deep south with no press, really, as you said, flying blind. So much of the civil rights movement was based on people taking a stand, whether it's small groups of individuals or, or larger numbers, but usually didn't know until after the fact what the outcome was going to be. There had been years and years of challenges to segregation on buses without people expecting that there was going to be this giant outcry and so I think that a lot of it was that For CINAR Business Director MARIE-JOSÉE CORBEIL educational both for them and hopefully for the people on the buses and that maybe they would draw some attention, but they had no idea going into it

what was going to result. Okay, and I'd like to just, I'd like to just talk about the fact that, you know, there was no press, you know, the, with them, that they, there was no real, you know, and there was, and there was no protection, there was this group of 12, 13 people who were just getting all buses and traveling all over. Right. The the absence of the press, I think, early on -- let me, let me, let me start, that's bad. When they boarded the buses, a couple of the participants had planned on writing their own accounts, and they'd managed to get a couple of journalists to go along. Moses Newson of the Baltimore Afro-American was the one who filed the most consistent regular reports and I think they were okay with that because early on they didn't know what to expect either and I don't think they expected that this was necessarily New York Times worthy or Washington Post worthy for the entire journey, or at least even if they hoped it, they didn't necessarily expect that was going to happen. What's one of the funny anecdotes is that when they are all boarding the buses, actually, some people

mistook Genevieve Hughes for a starlet and so some of the press did, did get some amusement out of that but they didn't get on the buses with them when they, when they left. What does that do? I think, you know, if you're going on this trip and you're going to go to the deep south and you don't have, you don't have protection, you don't have press, talk about the, the danger. The last supper stuff. The night before they left the Freedom Riders had this dinner in Washington DC and it's a relatively famous dinner and they jokingly called it the Last Supper because so many of them had a religious background and they wanted to make that invocation and I think part of the the reality of this is that they don't know what they're going to face. They don't know what they're going to confront and they realize that when they get somewhere further in the south, especially without the attention being paid, they might lose their lives and they might run into violence. I think they were very cognizant of what might happen which is why is I think they were at least happy that they had the press that they had with them. One of the things that, that we want to try to do is to give it, you know, to set this in the time and so we don't need a lot but just to give the idea that, you know, that there was no Civil Rights movement as we've

been doing, kind of, what we're always thinking of is that there are these isolated incidents, mostly in the upper south. You know, very few of them -- Montgomery bus boycott. Very few. But that, you know, that there was not this thing. that we've all, you know, you teach kids and it's like, the Civil Rights Movement. But just set it in its time, if you could. In the early 1960s you're in a situation where clearly African Americans have been for the longest time struggling for fundamental rights but there isn't a larger coherent movement going on at this point in many ways that you can identify as part of a larger continuum of civil rights. There are clearly things going on, and this accelerated in the post-World War II period, but the Freedom Rides are not yet part of something that you can identify coherently and clearly as following from everything that went before it. In a large sense, yes, the Freedom Riders were inspired by the sit-in movement, but at the same time they were operating on their own with their own organizational background and really as an isolated event in some ways.

I want you to again to talk a little bit about the movement. The idea that, you know, the idea there was no movement. Again, you're talking to me as, like, you know, a twelve-year-old, that -- -- that this point, you know, there's Martin Luther King doing his little thing, you know, but there's not this thing. At this stage in 1961, the movement as we know it doesn't really exist. It exists in isolated pods where students would sit in in Greensboro and other students would draw inspiration from that and they might sit in in Nashville or in Rock Hill, South Carolina. But these are really functioning in isolated nodes, almost, in ways that aren't really a full movement. Althoug, as one historian has said, there was movement, there just wasn't a movement. Once more? Okay. When the freedom riders are getting ready to embark in Washington DC in many ways they're stepping into this vast open space.

And we think about there being this civil rights movement but in many ways that's something that you identify looking back. At the time, civil rights operated where people would take a stand in Montgomery with the Montgomery bus boycott or they'd take a stand with the sit-ins in Greensboro and then other students would draw inspiration from those sit-ins. But in terms of there being one coherently organized national civil rights movement I don't think you can identify such a thing in 1961, not up until the Freedom Rides. Great, great, great. I think that one of the things that was, that was, I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought. Okay, that was great, you want to grab some water there? And that's one of the things that, that Farmer wanted. Okay. At this time you have a number of different civil rights organizations operating. The most prominent of these is the NAACP. You have Martin Luther King's SCLC that emerged from the Montgomery bus boycott and the Congress for Racial Equality fits in there as one of several civil rights organizations that at this point the average American, indeed, probably the average African American, couldn't have identified as an important civil rights organization.

So really the Freedom Rides are going to be an opportunity to put CORE on the map. And what, what, change the foregoing for me? What Farmer wanted, it puts CORE on the map, but what does it do personally for Farmer? Well, Farmer is a person who identifies himself. Let me start again. James Farmer is a person who was outspoken. He was a brilliant speaker. He was deeply committed to civil rights. And I think he had a conception of himself as being an important leader in this early struggle for civil rights. And so I think he's aware, especially as he takes over the leadership of the Congress of Racial Equality, that this is an opportunity for him as well. Okay, let's cut. Oh, there it is, what is it that -- what is that different from what -- The Congress of Racial Equality -- Start again. The Congress of Racial Equality emerged during World War II, drawing inspiration from both civil rights and pacifists in order to aggressively pursue civil rights by something called nonviolent direct action, which meant that you would engage in sit-ins and in boycotts. It was a bit different from what the NAACP pursued, which is mostly pursuing things through the courts in order to challenge larger laws and statutes.

Okay, cut. Let me, I'm going to ask you that, do that again. Again? I want to go back. It, it -- -- it's, you know, and I love what you have about the NAACP, which is, because as you said, again, you know, if a place was doing something you don't like, you go there, you sit in, you arrive at, you just take it right to, and that's what, you know, and that was a difference between CORE and -- that was who CORE was. Okay. The Congress of Racial Equality believed in nonviolent direct action, and they believed that that was an opportunity to really challenge things when they saw something wrong. So engage in a boycott against unfair hiring practices or engage in sit in campaigns where they won't serve you a cup of coffee. And that's a bit different from the NAACP, which engaged in its own important actions, which was challenging things through the legal system. But an organization like CORE believed that you needed to be more aggressive, you needed to be more assertive in order to fight for your rights and not simply wait for the courts to grant them to you. Mm-hmm. Beautiful. It's good.

My question being, as the Freedom Riders, as the Freedom Riders started, some people were very vocal. Some other civil rights leaders are, you know, to say that this is, don't do this. This is a mistake. There was definitely a division among civil rights activists as to the best tactics and the best approaches to confronting segregation. And there was never widespread agreement, and the NAACP, for example, was not particularly supportive of the idea of traveling into the maw of the deep south. They thought that it would end up in violence and destruction and carnage and that not much good would come of it. However, the Congress of racial equality was able to get the NAACP to agree to support anyone who was arrested or any problem. So even though the NAACP was really reluctant, they at least went along ultimately. I just want to get, get the idea of this being a kind of radical, the idea of the Freedom Rider being a radical move. And that if you can throw in there, I mean, I think one of the reasons why it was a radical -- can we cut for a second?

One of them is why, so again, Freedom Rides. And you know, they're, they haven't begun yet. They're just about to begin. Even among civil rights organizations, there wasn't universal support for the idea of something like the freedom rides. The idea of going into Alabama or Mississippi and challenging Jim Crow so frontally was something that scared lots of people. And it really was a radical idea if you think about it because it's really running the risk of violence and of bad things happening. And I'm going to do that again because bad things happening is really bad. You were good, you were rolling. Yeah, I know, I know, I know, I know. If you think about it, the idea of the Freedom Rides is a really radical idea. The idea of going into Mississippi and going into Alabama and challenging segregation so frontally and so aggressively in many ways is something that alarmed not only those who opposed civil rights, but those within the civil rights community. The NAACP was very reluctant for the Congress of Racial Equality to do this because they felt, felt that violence was going to happen.

That people were going to get hurt, indeed, that people might get killed. Okay, let, let's cut. Make sure that you try to -- Let me, let me see what I can do. In the siege in the church, there's all kinds of chaos going on. And there are phone calls being passed between the church and the White House, and between the White House and the Alabama State House. And during all of this, the Kennedys want to avoid violence. The Freedom Riders want to be protected and want to be able to move on. Patterson wants to be able to secure a political victory in Alabama while appearing to do something to prevent chaos from breaking out. And so while all of these conversations are going on, everyone has their own interests at heart and everyone has their own -- Change focus. Pick it up. Everyone has an agenda and everything has something they're trying to accomplish. And so you have these multiplicity of interests going on and you only have the one side of the conversation that everyone's hearing.

Because the people in the church aren't hearing what's going on between Kennedy and the Pattersons. Patterson isn't really aware of what's going on inside the church. The Kennedys are trying to bridge the gap between these two constituencies, really. Because Patterson had supported Kennedy in the election. And meanwhile, Kennedy certainly doesn't want to see bad things befall the Freedom Riders. Okay, go. So I think what we've got to get at, pushing, is urging Patterson. Look, you've got to do something. You've got to do, you know, you've got to do something. And it, and it should come from you. Right. So in the scene with the church where the church is under siege from the, the white supremacists, one factor you have is this triangle where the civil rights activists are pushing Robert Kennedy. And then Robert Kennedy is pushing Governor Patterson and he's saying, Kennedy is saying, look, you need to do something. This needs to come from you. It has to happen at the state level. Meanwhile, Patterson's trying to find appropriate political cover for

himself. So there's this interesting triangulation going on of power where everyone doesn't have complete power. And especially at the federal and state level, they're sort of playing this little game, where neither one of them wants to be held accountable for anything that goes wrong. And they want the political cover for things going right. Let's cut for a second. Right. Okay. So come at the same time. At the same time as the Kennedys are communicating with the folks in the church, you also have a situation where they are communicating with Patterson. And what they really want to see happen ultimately is a peaceful solution in which Patterson is the one who acts. Patterson is the one who protects the riders. Patterson is the one who takes the responsibility. Why? Because for them, for the Kennedys, operating within the deep south, it is better for it to happen locally. They realize that people in Alabama and people across the south want there to be local solutions to the problem. And they don't want to appear to be imposing the will of the federal government.

So behind this all, at the time, if they're talking to Martin Luther King, they're also urging Patterson to do something. Oh, absolutely. They are trying to tell the -- My voice is not going to be there. The Kennedys are talking to the Freedom Riders, and in many ways, trying to tell the Freedom Riders slow down, calm down, have a cooling-off period. But at the same time, they're talking to Patterson, saying, you need to do something. You need to act, and you need to act now. And it's to protect public safety, but it's also to, in some ways, do the right thing. Okay. Great. Let's cut. Now a little bit of that. What you're beginning to see happen in Birmingham after the group is arrested and brought back to Tennessee is other groups coming in. And suddenly, already, the Freedom Rides have spread, and they've grown. So in a lot of ways, the Congress of Racial Equality really accomplished their biggest goal, was to turn this into something bigger than merely a group of people riding buses from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans in this planned operation.

I want you to do that again for me. But to tell it as the story. Okay. So, you know, when the second group gets... When this first group gets back from the national border, you know, they're surprised -- or there's already this other group there. Yeah. So when the group that's arrested gets back down into Birmingham, they arrive, and they're as shocked as anybody else to see that another group has arrived coming down from Nashville. And what you're beginning to have is the spread of the Freedom Rides from this small operation that starts in Washington, D.C. with relatively little publicity to something that's drawing, increasing attention, not only within civil rights activists, but also nationally. Um, uh, keep rolling. But give me a kind of -- But they're both now trapped in this burning bus station. But what they're finding now is that they're facing a very intransigent foe in Bull Connor, and they're sort of stuck in Birmingham, and they're not able to get out to go where they want to go, and they don't want to go back up to Tennessee.

Okay. Good. Good. Okay. Um, okay, so they start calling in below. So the students are trying to convince King to go along with them, and he says, I shall choose the time and place of my Golgotha. And instantly, that causes the students to refer to him as 'de lawd', D-E-L-A-W-D. Referring to him as a Christlike figure, which is a reputation that King had gotten among some of the younger members of the movement. I'm going to ask you to do that again. Do it again. I'm going to stop -- tell me, Golgotha, whatever it is, because I, I'm not -- Sure. -- a biblical scholar. I've read, over and over, I don't know what the hell he's talking about. Sure, sure. Just that, you know, they call him 'de lawd' and, and, and get him... And I think, you know, all we need to add that is, you know, they're being sarcastic, because they're saying, you know, he's, you know, okay? Get rolling. Right. So when the students are trying to get King to go, and he is reluctant, they start referring to him as 'de lawd,'

D-E L-A-W-D, which is a really sarcastic rejoinder about what many of the younger members of the civil rights movement felt, which was that King was, saw himself as a religious figure, as a grand religious figure, and they were really derisive of that idea. Great. Thank you. Um... Um..... That, you know, so his next movement was the site. of the most feared jail. Right. Okay. So the Freedom Riders are filling up the jails in Jackson, and Ross Barnett, the Governor of Mississippi, decides the next step is to send them to Parchman Farm in the Delta, which is this notorious legendary prison in Mississippi. Why is it legendary? One historian has referred to Parchman Farm as a place worse than slavery. Let me rephrase that.

Some have referred to Parchman Farm as a place worse than slavery, where African Americans were mistreated brutally, and it was a violent place and a dangerous place, and it was some place you did not want to end up. I want to give a sense -- can we cut for a second. One of the things that, you know, that, that, that for Ross -- it's kind of this game, this chess match that they've gotten into with Ross Barnett, and Ross Barnett actually thinks he's won. He thinks, okay, well, that's another part of the hat and I won. But, you know, their next movement, and what it's become a chess game is to say, okay, fine, we've got something for you. So there's a tremendous amount of gamesmanship going on between the civil rights activists and Ross Barnett. And Ross Barnett thinks that he has the ultimate move on the chess board by setting them to Parchman Farm. And it does seem like a pretty good move, all in all. But then the civil rights activist, the Freedom Riders, take the pretty brave stand of saying fine. We'll go to Parchman, and we'll fill Parchman up, and we'll make Parchman the next site of the civil rights movement. You can go.

And so they get up there, and the guards try to break their spirit, and they can't do it. And the Freedom Riders sing, and they develop communities, and they continue the struggle, just like they had elsewhere. So it became a continuation of the Freedom Rides. So that Parchman becomes every much as much a location in the Freedom Rides, as the bus depots themselves. Okay. I want to talk about something that you hit on there, is that Parchman then becomes something more. Right. And so this is, this is, okay, so, so, you know, time has passed. You've, you've just made that statement. Now they've flooded into Jackson, and Parchman becomes something that, that, that Ross Barnett couldn't have imagined. Right. It becomes this kind of university, it becomes different. Right. Talk about it. So Parchman, which starts off the summer as this feared place, ends up being the next location of the civil rights movement, ends up being a place where the civil rights activists take over and claim as their own. And they almost conquer Parchman Farm, and they stay there, they fill it up for the summer, they stay as long as they can.

And then they, a next wave comes in. It becomes this remarkable location. I want to talk about that, I want you to do that for me again. Yeah. I like where you start, on the contestion. But we want to talk about, about how, you know, they start holding classes, and in some ways, it doesn't, in the movement -- Right. It coalesces this determination. Right. So they end up in Parchman, which starts off as this dreaded place, and they turn it into their own community, their own civil rights community, where they hold classes, and they sing spirituals, and they discuss and debate tactics and approaches and politics. And so they've really claimed Parchman as their own in some ways, which is a remarkable thing if you think about what Parchman meant to so many people for so long, as a place of despair and violence and danger. Um, and give me, and talk about, you know, kind of giving you a suggestion, but what that must have done to Ross Barnett, because he just said earlier, he thought he's made the final move on the chessboard. Yep. It must have flabbergasted Barnett. I mean, he must have been stunned by the idea that Parchman had lost some of its resonance. Let me, let me -- I'm sorry. I'm sorry, go --

Okay. Say, say, say Governor Ross Barnett. Governor Ross Barnett must have been flabbergasted by what he saw happening in Parchman, what was developing in front of him, because it was this feared and loathed place where no one wanted to end up, and instead they'd taken control of it on their own. They'd mastered Parchman in some ways. I think, talk about the fact that what it means, you know, again, for, for, for this movement, it seems like it's almost like, you know, we can't be stopped. There was a spiritual during the civil rights movement that said, we shall not be moved. And what they did by conquering Parchman really seems to me to embody that. One of those songs that they must have sung a thousand times in Parchman is exemplified by the fact that even Parchman couldn't move them. Even Parchman couldn't take away their spirit for the movement. Okay. That's cut. How much, how much tape we got left?

So, just the idea that that, you know, that finally there's this agreement that they're going to get this participated, and they're going to get out of Alabama and onto Mississippi. So, after all of the chaos in Anniston, Birmingham and Montgomery, the Kennedys finally broker a deal to get them out of Alabama, to get the Freedom Riders on the way. And you can just imagine Patterson thinking, now it's Mississippi's problem. Okay, cut. Um. Get them out of, out of Alabama. Okay, get them -- So, while they're at Harris' house, they finally have a deal brokered between the Kennedys and Patterson and the officials of Mississippi to get them out of Alabama. And one can imagine the relief for Patterson that now they're Mississippi's problem. And so, say something about, you know, so finally they get on this bus with massive protection going towards Mississippi. And so finally they board the bus, and those buses are headed west, and they're going to be massively protected by Alabama officials and by military officials to and through the Mississippi

border. That's what they expect. Okay, one more time. Okay. And so finally the Freedom Riders are able to board these buses in Alabama, headed towards Mississippi, with this unexpected convoy of protection from police and military officials. Okay, let's go.