The Great Depression; Interview with Miller Williams. Part 2

Take five. Marker. To my knowledge, my father didn't get involved much in organizing in the field except one time I know about when field becomes literal and not metaphorical. He was out in the cotton field talking to tenant farmers when a shot was fired and clearly and obviously in his direction. The family was shaken over that. He was dissuaded from working in the fields for a little while. It did frighten him, frighten us all to the extent that we had dinner with our shades drawn for a while because we were frankly afraid of night riders. They weren't a myth. Night riders, we can say we didn't know who night riders were and specifically, usually we didn't but we knew that they were very likely to be goons hired for the purpose, by

plantation owners, sometimes or sometimes regular staff of the plantation owners, sometimes sheriff men. Sometimes there was no difference. There may have been actual Klan involvement in it but again there wasn't a clean line between who, which was which. You could work for the sheriff and still be a member of the Klan and still work for a plantation owner. Let me start this way and if it doesn't work I'll start back. The organizers were very much aware that there was no one to turn to, no one in authority.

We believed that in the north the government played a role, maybe a kind of referee role in all of this. We knew we couldn't turn to local authority and we never gave a thought to federal authority. We felt no federal presence. Let me start over. I'm still saying we. I was four. The organizers of the union knew, it's my understanding, that in the north the federal government played at least a kind of referee role in union organization and in the confrontation between union and corporate ownership. In the south, certainly in my part of the south, the union organizers had no one to turn to in terms of government.

Certainly they couldn't have turned to the county sheriff, to the town marshal, to the state government, not at that time. So far as the federal power is concerned, we didn't know it existed. We had no sense of a federal, Can I start in the middle of a sentence? So far as the federal government is concerned, they didn't know it existed. I have been, so far as the federal government is concerned, they didn't know it existed. It's been explained to me very clearly over and over again the vacuum that they felt, that there was no federal presence here. Well not good, but maybe you can cut and paste it. I could have broken down and cried. That might have gotten me through that one. Can you give me anything more in terms of the general atmosphere of fear and intimidation?

and the protocol, the rules of the south, the idea of this interracial union making demands, trying to change something? Do we need to stop? Do you need to think about it a minute? Well, a second. I told you about my: Let's stop, because I want this to be the last row. How much we got left? I told you about my. Okay, that was take five. That was starting on camera, later five. Now we're going to take six. The broad-based and venomous response to the attempts to organize the Southern Tenant Farmers Union are explained in great part because it was an interracial movement.

A lot of people enlisted in the fight against the union, not because it was a union, but because it was interracial. An awful lot of people who had nothing to do with plantations and could not have cared less what happened to them, did not want blacks and whites meeting together because it represented a crack in the dike of segregation. Good, let's stop the camera. We have to attribute this to your father and the organization. Yeah, of course. My father was aware of the fact, had to be, that so far as changing the lives of the share

croppers in any permanent way was concerned, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union was a dismal failure. It taught the people who were involved in it two very important things. One, that they could fight, they could organize, and they could do it with dignity. To my father, what it taught them more importantly was that blacks and whites could fight together. That's good, but can you give it to me again because I'd like to have it just in one take so I can leave you on camera. Okay, I will try.

Take eight, marker. My father was aware of the fact that as an instrument to change the lives of the share croppers in any substantive and permanent way, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union was a dismal failure. But he believed, and I think rightly, that it, let me start over. I'm going to leave me out of it. My father was aware of the fact that as an instrument for changing the lives of the tenant farmers in any substantive and permanent way, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union was a dismal failure.

But he believed that it taught all those people who were involved in it two very important lessons. One, that they could fight and with dignity. And two, and more importantly for him, that blacks and whites could fight together. Let's take eight, take nine next. Intimidation took many forms. If it happened after dark, the perpetrators were always called night riders. Whoever was doing it, it was a generic term. One could become a night rider simply by trying to scare people after dark for political reasons.

This intimidation might take the form of knocking over someone's outhouse, driving a car through a fence, shooting someone's hog or dog, or in another context, closer to home, my mother and father were made to lie down on their front porch by a man with a shotgun and held there almost until dawn as punishment and intimidation. One time when my father was working in the cotton fields talking to share croppers who were not yet members of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, a shot was fired clearly at him.

It shook him up pretty badly. It shook us all up in the family. For some time after that, we ate dinner with the shades drawn. We were afraid of night riders. We were afraid of night riders. The county sheriff was as important as he was in great part because there was no federal presence. The federal government to us meant the WPA and the CCC. But there was no federal law enforcement.

There was no federal judiciary that we were aware of. It was all the sheriff. Stop it? Start where? - - - - - - - - - - Marker. To my father and the organizers, the federal government was the WPA and CCC, but there was no judiciary and no federal cop, no law enforcement from the federal government so far as we knew. Cut it. We're out of time. Well maybe you can cut, but the thing is, the reason I had so much trouble, I was there

then. It was hard to keep myself out of it. That was take 11 and that was the end of camera roll 85. Okay, that's the end of the interview with Miller Williams. This will be room tone for that interview. - - Thank you. Okay, end room tone. You're very welcome. Okay, and that's the end of the sound roll. The end of the interview. I'm amazed at what you people can do.