Interview with Kenneth Salaam by Diane Turner, for the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 9, 2011.

DIANE TURNER: Good morning. My name is Dr. Diane Turner. I’m the

Curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, and

I’m very honored this morning to be interviewing Mr. Kenneth

Salaam.

KENNETH SALAAM: Thank you so much, Doctor. I’m glad to be here,

and—it’s such a historical environment here at the Charles Blockson

Museum. It’s just beautiful here, and it’s really a historical

opportunity for me as well.

DT: Okay. Could you state your full name, please?

KS: Kenneth A. Salaam.

DT: And what is your date of birth?

KS: March 23rd, 1949.

DT: Where do you live?

KS: In—currently I live in East Oak Lane.

DT: Okay. And what were your parents’ names?

KS: My mother name is Merrilee Norman and my father name, Timothy

Smith.

DT: And what are their occupations?

KS: My father’s deceased but prior to—prior to his death he was a

sheriff—for, like a sheriff, a prison guard, you know just—the last

thing I remember he was a sheriff, sort of like a sheriff, you know.

My mother, domestic work.

DT: Okay. Can you provide a brief biographical sketch of your life and

career?

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KS: Well, five—I have five brothers—four brothers and three sisters,

eight, eight—eight of us, eight siblings. Raised in North Philadelphia,

went to Robert Vaux Junior High School, Carver Elementary

School—George Washington Carver Elementary School, and when I

entered Thomas Edison High School at the time, during the sixties, I

got involved with the NAACP Youth Council. And so I became

conscious of what was going on the country with African-

Americans—blacks, they called us at that time, or Negroes—but I

became conscious that something was terribly wrong in America, so I

just started, you know, just figuring out how can I do something?

And I was able to meet with the—a group called the NAACP Youth

Council, and I joined the NAACP Youth Council under the leadership

of Cecil B. Moore at the time.

And then, I eventually just jumped in with both feets. I was one

of the original persons who helped begin the demonstrations at Girard

College, that early morning, May—May 1st, 1965; came up there to

Girard College, and from then on I just got totally involved--got so

involved that I quit high school, and just completely emerged myself

in the Civil Rights Movement. I went to Mississippi. I worked with

Dr. King, some civil marches. I became known as Freedom Smitty.

People kept saying, “Man, you’re always here, you’re always there.”

The next thing you know, they were calling me Freedom, so that

became my new name in the Civil Rights Movement. But it gave me

the opportunity to meet a lot of people, travel in Mississippi, all

through the South.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. King, as I said; Fanny Lou

Hamer, stayed with her when I went to Mississippi for a few times.

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Was on the marches from—I walked from Memphis, Tennessee, to

Jackson, Mississippi. We were gassed and water-hosed along the

way. Went to demonstrations in New York and other cities. I just got

totally involved. And eventually, I—I got married in the early

seventies, and moved back south—moved down South to South

Carolina, where I got involved again in the community, and we were

able to build—in Anderson, South Carolina, where I went, we were

able to build the first community center from the ground up without

any federal funds. And what is shocking to me: I went back a few

years ago and they had engraved my name on the stone, you know,

[laughs] as one of the founders of the building.

Then, eventually, I came back to Philadelphia, divorced and

remarried and—but all through these years from 1968, my income

was basically painting. I was a house painter—that was how I sort of

supported myself. And, that’s basically it.

DT: Okay. Now, your career as an activist is very impressive. And what

I’d like to do now is to focus on two events or movements here in

Philadelphia, and I’d like to begin with the Columbia Avenue riot,

which is what it was called. Where did you reside at the time of the

Columbia Avenue riot?

KS: Well, the riot started at Twenty-Second and Columbia, from my

understanding. And I lived at Sixteenth and Columbia, so I was right

there in the mix. I lived on Sixteenth, 1710 North Sixteenth Street

when the riots broke out that night, and, like everybody else who were

young at the time, we just got involved, you know, see what was

going on and eventually, you know, we were in the midst of it.

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DT: Could you describe North Philadelphia area, before the riots, where

you lived? What was it like there?

KS: Well, North Philadelphia was a real, real—it was a predominantly

African—when I was little, like in elementary school and junior high

school, there were—it was sort of integrated. You know, you still had

some Caucasians who had not left yet—left the area. But the street I

lived on, Sixteenth Street, my parents, my grandfather moved in, in

1945 from Greenville, South Carolina, which was my—my parents’

home. And it was, you know, a very middle class neighborhood:

middle class, tree-lined streets. I remember growing up, everybody

kept their porches—not their porches, but the front of their houses

clean. We had the big limestone steps and we had to scrub those as

children.

Columbia Avenue—I lived in 1700, and that’s where Columbia

Avenue begins, 1700 North, and Columbia Avenue was where all the

businesses were, you know. We had a—a movie theater called the

Liberty, which was at Broad and—between Fifteenth and Broad

and—and Columbia Avenue, which is now Cecil Moore Avenue.

[Laughs] There was a big—Len’s Restaurant was on the corner.

There was a jazz club, I think it was called Pep’s, on—I’ll think of it

in a minute, but it was a nice jazz club. So a lot of jazz on Columbia

Avenue, a lot of club, a lot of bars; a big supermarket called the Best

Market. So everything was right there. You had your supermarket,

you had your African American—lot of businesses: you had African

American shoe—shoe stores, you know that repaired shoes, shoe

repair shops—cleaners, fruit stands. So, it was—it was—you had—

naturally you had the white businesses were there, too. But there was

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some—I did witness, as a child, African-Americans in business on

Columbia Avenue. The Best Market was one of the areas that really

employed a lot of the young children, my age, because we would go

there; we would take old fish boxes and put two by four boards on

each side and take old baby coach wheels and build moving carts that

we could carry people’s orders from the supermarket for twenty-five

cents or—so that was the way we generated some income that we

could, you know, help out with the family. So, basically, it was a

beautiful area. I mean the stores and, you know, but that variety was

unbelievable! It was just—it was amazing how it just never came

back to that.

DT: Okay. What was the racial make-up of the area at that time?

KS: As I said, there were some Caucasians houses—residents—in the area

but I would say, maybe five percent, like that, Caucasians. But the

businesses—predominantly the businesses were Caucasian businesses.

But residents, I’d say about five percent.

DT: What kind of businesses did they have?

KS: Supermarket was one. Doctor office, lawyers. There was one African

American lawyer also on the same block. Drugstores. There was also

another African American drugstore. Just the normal—you know,

things that you would go, you know, shopping: drugstores,

supermarkets, vegetables, meat shops with fresh meats, clothing

stores. There was one hat shop was very popular in North

Philadelphia with most of the guys. We called it—then you would

call guys that were well-dressed, you’d call them Yocks, which I

could never be, because five brothers waiting on my big brother’s

clothes, I would never have been a Yock! But it was a very popular

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store that a lot of the well-dressed guys would purchase their clothes

from.

DT: Yock! So, who came up with that name? [Laughs]

KS: I don’t know, but that was the name I knew! If you was a Yock, you

were clean-cut and well off, you know. Something I know I never

would—I never thought I would experience, when even today I

couldn’t dress like a Yock, you know. [Laughs] So, I went from no

family, you know, to when you raise a family you don’t have that

much money, you know, for your own self with the cost of children.

DT: So, what would a Yock have on?

KS: A Yock would—everything is, I mean, he would wear the best shoes,

the best clothes. And a lot of times guys like myself, who knew that

we—our parents could not afford us those clothing—we would, you

know, now and then we might get a little piece in. But we—the

Yocks were our mentors or they were our role models for dressing.

They would wear the loafers when loafers were very popular in the

neighborhood. They would put the quarter inside there, little slit on

the top—or put a dime or quarter in. They wore the knit sweaters, and

the tweed pants with the cuffs, and the wing-tip shoes. You know,

just—and the straw hats, and the velour hats with the feathers in them,

you know. So, they were well-dressed guys, man. And like my

cousin, my first cousin, who was the only child—only boy child; he

had two sisters—two sisters, but he was the only boy child—he was a

Yock. All I remember about him was he had beautiful sweaters and

pants, and so, he was an aspiration that I never experienced, other than

just looking at them.

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DT: Okay. Now, I’d like you to reflect back to the day of the riot. What

was your impression of the general atmosphere in North Philadelphia

the day of the riot? Did that day go any different from any other day?

KS: It was nothing—it was nothing in the air. But, you know, but I was

young, and I didn’t understand unemployment for African-Americans.

I didn’t understand the—the level of the impact that it had on the

community, because I wasn’t taking—I had no responsibility but

myself. So, employment wasn’t a issue for me. But, I’m sure, you

know, the unemployment and frustration of not—probably not

working, you know, reflect—with retrospecting now, but, at the time,

it was a normal sunny day in August. You know, it was warm, you

know just—you know, it just—well, a year before that they had—

there was a riot up on Susquehanna Avenue.

DT: What year was that?

KS: 1963. A policeman had killed a guy, and this wasn’t a rumor; he had

actually shot a guy. And Father Paul Washington of the Church of the

Advocate was very active in that, quelling that, but that was—it did

about—I don’t know, later on learned about maybe a million, two

million dollars worth of damage up there, Susquehanna Avenue.

So—so, the riots on Columbia Avenue was 1964, so I guess that’s—

that—that it was still in the atmosphere, in the subconscious of the

people. But it was a normal day in August, and it was evenings—

early evening, and it was dark. It wasn’t dusk, it was dark. And all of

a sudden I heard—I just heard—we heard a lot of police cars. And we

were just out—out in front of the houses, and we was just talking and

just doing normal things that teen-agers do. I was about—guess I was

about fifteen. And all of a sudden, you hear police cars running up

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and down the Avenue. And in North Philadelphia, you know, first of

all, it wasn’t a good relationship with the police anyway, you know.

Nineteenth and Poplar, which was later became the first OIC

Industrialization Center was the police station there. Most African

Americans didn’t want to go there, you know, because it was you

know, definitely a place where you would get your head whipped or,

you know, you would be beat up pretty bad. So—

DT: So there was a lot of police brutality?

KS: Yeah, it was a lot of—it was—no one had a good story to tell if they

were arrested and taken to Nineteenth and Poplar, you know, to the

police station, you know. Not everyone was beat that was arrested,

but enough harassment and agitation had taken place. I remember an

incident when I was a little boy, and that’s the first—my first

experience with the police and racism, and—and I didn’t see the

racism until later. But, they were building—I went to George

Washington Carver Elementary School, which is now the school for—

it’s—it’s another name but it’s Seventeenth and Norris. But when I

was going to school there, half of where the school, the new building

is now, used to be a grave yard. And they excavated the bodies and

they started building more of the school. And they had some long

rods, I learned later, where that used to strengthen cement; they were

like long poles but they were iron poles.

So, two friends of mine, we would go—in the evening, we

would go up there, just you know, walking like boys; we had nothing

else to do, you know. And we were walking around the construction

sites and we saw these little bars, so we start playing knights, you

know, charging each other—weren’t hitting each other, we were just

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charging each other. I’ll never forget this. The police officer car

pulled up and—whoa, you know, put his siren on, and we dropped the

pipes and started running! And I mean, the way the police was

chasing us! And when they finally caught us, just they grabbed us and

were just kicking us, and holding us up in the air, you know! I mean,

and we knew we—you know, that we already had this idea in our

mind: oh, the police going to get you, you live, you know, in the

North Philly as African-American; you know, it was black at that

time. You know, with [unclear] police [unclear]. They didn’t like us.

That was the idea: the police did not like you, you know. But I had

not experienced that myself. But I’ll never forget that policeman; he

chased us. He actually went down a one-way street trying to catch

these two little boys. And he finally got me, man; he slammed me up

against a wall. “You [unclear] I catch you up there again!” I said,

“Man, you thought I stole a—?” I mean, you know, and if I was

probably any larger—I was a small guy, I was skinny, you know what

I mean? But if I had really been, you know, like agitating him like,

“What? Take your hands off me,” you know, but I was like, a very

nice guy, you know, just surprised all this was happening to me. I was

wishing it would over with, you know! But that was my first

experience. I said, this guy really—[unclear] was trying to kill me, I

mean, just really, the anger it—it was just amazing! You know, later

on—later on in life as an adult, you know what it was about.

So, it was a normal day that day, you know, and the—the

police had, you know, there was rumors, and I’ve seen people get

arrested and, as you know, the story is that night, there were so many

rumors going around. And, so, as I said, we saw the police car

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running around: what was going on? Next thing you know, is so

many police and down at the riot—because I’m at Sixteenth Street

now, and the riot started at Twenty-Second Street, so it didn’t take

long to get to Sixteenth Street. So, it’s because most of the businesses

were—this was going towards Broad. You had a few businesses after

Twenty-Second Street. You’ve got Ridge Avenue, then you, after

Ridge Avenue cut across Cecil Moore, I mean, Columbia Avenue.

Then after that, Columbia Avenue, more houses than stores. Most of

your stores were on—was east of Twenty-Second Street, all of your

main—on both sides of the streets and then you went up Ridge

Avenue and a lot of stores on Ridge Avenue, which got it really bad.

So the riot went up Ridge and towards Broad; we knew that was all

the stores there. You had Stern’s, a ladies’ store—every store was hit.

I mean, there was no store spared on Columbia Avenue.

DT: So, what did you say? You were actually where?

KS: At Sixteenth and Columbia.

DT: Okay.

KS: Right. And, as I said, all—I first began to hear the police cars running

up, going west toward Twenty-Second Street. [Coughs] And then,

you know, you think it’s just something going on. Then more cops,

more cops, more cops! And all of a sudden everybody’s on Columbia

Avenue, looking up the street. Now, you can see this—you see the

lights and people starting to come this way. Just, you know, police

cars coming down, coming east and, then, people. And then I started

going to— I’m going, now I’m going toward Twenty-Second Street to

see what’s going on. So, by the time I get to Eighteenth Street, it’s

like: people screaming, glass breaking, cops! It was just mayhem,

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you know, mayhem, you know. So, I never experienced anything

like, you know.

But it was serious! I mean, these people—everybody was

breaking windows, police were beating people, you know. And then

all of a sudden, by the time I got up to like, maybe Broad Street or

Fifteenth Street, I mean, it was so many police they were coming in

busses! Those policemen there, they actually were—first they wasn’t

fit for it. You know, they wasn’t dressed for a riot, you know. Then

they really had a lot of riot gear. They had their helmets on, you

know, and—but again, everything was just so much going on. Some

people getting beat. One guy getting beat over the head, another guy

going into steal something out of a store—I mean it was just a mixture

of everything: the police, the rioters, the stealing, I mean, probably

the looting, you know. So, and I got involved, you know, I—you

know, I—you know, a kid, you know? And the funny thing is, as I

said—

DT: So how did you get involved?

KS: I just started doing what everybody else doing. Windows, when the

stores were broken, I would go in, you know, try to get me something.

And the funny thing is I had got my mother—my beautiful mother—

she never had a real good toaster. I got her a nice toaster, right?

[Laughs] And something else—I got her a toaster and something else.

And I was coming home and I—as I said earlier, my father was a

sheriff. So, when I got to their house and tried to bring the stuff in,

he’s at the door. He says, “What you doing? Nuh-uh, you’re not

going to bring.” So, all the stuff I had gotten for my mother, I

couldn’t bring in the house, because my Dad—and he told me, “You

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better get in here,” right? I said, “No dad, I go back out,” you know,

so—and I was never able to personally get anything. A lot of people

were taking things home, but I couldn’t take anything home, so my

thing was just wandering around, but I didn’t get beat or anything like

that. But witnessed a lot of people get beat, so I was out all night

because it lasted up into the night, you know.

DT: And how old were you?

KS: Fifteen.

DT: Okay. Now, there were different explanations given regarding what

actually ignited the riot. What do you believe, or what were you told

actually happened?

KS: The first thing that I heard was a police was trying to arrest a pregnant

woman, and a drunk got involved. A guy was drinking, got involved.

The police started beating him and the people said, “Leave him

alone.” Again, it’s hot, you know. They said, “Leave him alone, he

don’t—” you know, like you see in the movies: “Get back. You all

stand back.” That’s the first thing I heard: a pregnant woman had

gotten beat and a drunk had gotten beat. And later I learned it was

just the woman who got stopped for a traffic violation and the police

harrassed her and the people grew agitated. Actually, I heard the

police were getting—the crowd got around and started telling the

police, “Don’t, she ain’t doing nothing,” about whatever, and the

police started saying, “Get back.” And then a brick fell or a bottle

was thrown, and then, you know, that’s when I learned later, you

know. But at that time it was a pregnant woman getting beat by the

police and the police had beat up a drunk man.

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DT: Okay. Now, you said that you tried to get involved in the looting a

little bit. What is your feeling toward the looters?

KS: Yeah. I don’t really—

DT: Or your—?

KS: I didn’t feel, I didn’t feel—I didn’t feel that they were—were wrong.

I felt that they were—I don’t know, it’s hard—you know, I didn’t feel

they were—I didn’t say, “Well, they shouldn’t be going in these

peoples’ stores, stealing their stuff.” I didn’t feel that. I did feel that

some way it was justified, because you know, a lot of them stores

would be cheating us, you know, would be cheating the people!

[Laughs] And now’s the chance to get some things from them. Then

again, a lot of people didn’t have a lot of things that those stores

offered, you know, so it gave people the opportunity to get some

things. I know, as I say, I was one of those kids who had their nose

pressed up against the glass a lot of times, looking at stuff that I wish I

had. So, I think a lot of people just saw the opportunity to get a lot of

things they never had, and some people, I’m sure, really did it out of:

“I’m just going to take everything I can get.” You know, you know,

but I think some people were actually just thinking that, you know,

here’s an opportunity to get something I’ve never had. But some

people out there were getting things and later selling them or you

know, I believe, sold them, you know. So, it wasn’t a—that I feel bad;

I didn’t have that. I don’t think I thought about that. Just got caught

up, you know.

DT: So, how long did the looting go on?

KS: Well, it went on for all that night. I do remember that. And the next

day wasn’t as, you know, they quelled it that night. I don’t remember

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it being like two or three or four days, you know; there were little

spurts here and spurts here and there. But they cordoned off, I think

they—it was from Thirty-Third to Broad, Lehigh to Parkland. I think

that was the area. Then they—then the next day, you had to show I.D.

You know, they did--I guess you’d call it martial law. You know, you

wouldn’t allow—nobody can gather after sunset, you know. I do

remember that, you know, couldn’t—what would happen when the

police had it—you know, what are you doing, coming to work or

something, you had to show why you were out, you know. I do

remember that. But it—I don’t remember it being three, four, five

days, something like what happened in Watts. You know, there

wasn’t a lot of fires; I don’t remember many fires. For us it was a lot

of breaking. I remember when a friend of mine—I knew, I knew him

because he had a cleaners with Green, Robert Green. He was killed.

He was the only person I knew that was killed. Robert Green was

killed. He had the cleaners at Eighteenth and Columbia Avenue.

DT: Was he African American?

KS: African American, Robert Green.

DT: And how was he killed?

KS: Shot. At least they say, police. They don’t know just what—later on,

they said, police said that he had lunged—lunged at them with a knife,

which if knew Robert Green, you know, you knew he [unclear]. But

Robert was killed and they beat up real bad—even thought he was

dead—Shaq Mohammed . Used to live at—used to have a place at

Twenty-Third and Cecil B. Moore. It was next to—now, it’s Cecil B.

Moore Library, but he was right—his place was right next to that,

Shaq Mohammed.

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DT: What kind of place did he have?

KS: He was like a black nationalist, or he was like Moorish-American, or

Islam, you know. He was very conscious of the African American

plight. You know, one of the few people that I knew in the

neighborhood who was conscious. But matter of fact, when I was

little, on Sixteenth Street, I lived in the seven-hundred block of

Sixteenth Street, 1710 and 1708. Next door to me, was a place called

the Ghana House. I remember when I was a little boy, seeing a lot of

Ghanese come in—later I learned they were Ghanese, but I noticed

how they dress and everything. And those were the only two places

that I knew—and then around the corner was Marcus Garvey Hall,

where a lot of the—Marcus Garvey’s people would come, and I knew

they had a parade every year, you know, up and down Columbia

Avenue. And it was one of the places where Malcolm first started

speaking in Philadelphia, you know. He used to have meetings there,

Nation of Islam before they had the—one of the big temples. But, so

those are the few places I knew with a black conscious and those were

my first—but, again, no interest, you know, just in the periphery of

my eyes or my mind, you know, I remember these guys.

But Shaq Mohammed got—he got beat real bad during the

riots, and Robert Green was the only one I knew that got killed. But a

lot of people got—because people were telling me that St. Joseph’s

Hospital was—they were mopping blood up with mops. And so many

people; I think it was about five hundred, six hundred people got

injured, you know, during the riot, you know. So there was a lot of—

it was bloody. I always said later, [coughs] Newark was happening in

’68, after [unclear] died. But L.A., the shooting—a lot of people died

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in L.A. But Philly, they beat the—it was just bloody! Philly was

bloody. I mean, they were hitting the sidewalks. I mean, when I

would see people getting beat—that’s—that’s the thing about a riot.

You can see an incident over here going on, and then they had the

police, they can only concentrate on so many areas, you know what I

mean? They was like reactionary: “Who’s doing this and who can

I—?” How many people that I can get in a certain amount of time,

without—you know, they couldn’t grab everybody. So, it’s either

nobody would—nobody would see someone else being beaten and it

would stop them from doing what they had to do, what I’m trying to

say. So, it was something going on all the time! Somebody was

getting beat; somebody, you know, [unclear], looting, or throwing a

brick, or throwing a bottle, you know.

But the police, man, I mean they—they whipped—I mean, just

seeing people just beat! You know—and once you start seeing the

first reaction: oh, my goodness! But then you start seeing so many—

so much blood and so many people getting beat, just, you just trying

to keep from getting beat yourself, you know what I mean? But they

was—thing that I—one of the things that I remember was—and I

explained this, just myself later on, after I got involved, you know, at

the Girard College. But that was the first time I saw the—that I

realized the police black-jacks, the night sticks that they used—not the

black-jacks but their own night sticks they carried, had a—a steel bar

or a metal bar in between, a little rod inside that wood. And they was

hitting! I seen the police hit the sidewalk, was beating this guy, and

every time they missed him, the sparks would come out the sidewalk.

You know, that’s how hard they was trying to kill you! [Laughs] You

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know what I mean? I experienced that later myself, personally, you

know, but that was the first time I saw those—the sparks came out the

ground.

DT: So, how did you avoid any confrontation?

KS: I never got hit. I just see them come and run! You know, and they’ll

run so far and then they’ll stop, you know what I mean? There was no

making run, run, run, run, run, you know, because they knew, before

they’d go into an area, you know what I mean, by themselves, they

would—at one point—I never remembered them moving like you see

in the movies, you know, all breast to breast, just moving down the

avenue, moving down the Avenue, moving down the Avenue. But I

remember when Georgie Woods came up on the Avenue, and Cecil;

they came up on the Avenue around Seventeenth, Eighteenth,

something like that.

DT: That same night?

KS: Yeah, that same night and they had the bullhorn, you know, was

talking and, you know, telling everybody to calm down and, you

know. But at the time I didn’t know too much about either one, you

know. But I do remember—later I knew those were the guys, I knew

Georgie Woods, you know, [unclear]. But I didn’t know the power of

Cecil Moore at the time, the influence, you know? Because people

did calm down and he had—he did have an audience, you know. And

I guess when it went into the night, just to the point where the police

had got control of the streets, you know, so people—so people would

back off the Avenue. They cleared the Avenue, so people just, you

know, got back off the Avenue.

DT: What was the media response to the riots?

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KS: I don’t really know. I can’t say.

DT: Okay.

KS: Other than, you know, a riot in North Philadelphia, looting. You

know, it made the people like they were [pause] just looters and just

wild there, you know what I mean? And need to be quelled and

taught a lesson or whatever, you know. There was Negroes tearing up

the city, you know. They knew what the threat—the threat was, I’m

sure, because they—because you couldn’t get past Broad Street. They

had that—you couldn’t go, you know, because you couldn’t go down.

Once you got to Broad, you couldn’t like go down Broad. I mean, the

police, they really—I do remember going to Broad. They had—I

mean, them police were thick! So I guess they wanted to, you know,

you start walking downtown, you know. But, we did—we did a job

with our own [unclear], I’ll tell you that much. I’m realizing it now.

We wouldn’t be taught, you know, frustration we couldn’t, you know.

You know, if someone don’t know how to control anger, you know,

they—we was around them. You know what I mean? I’m sure in

retrospect, a lot of us never [unclear] with a living thing. We had a

[coughs] pardon me, a strong community, you know, and that was the

sad thing about it.

DT: Do you feel that the police response was appropriate or excessive?

KS: Oh, it was excessive, definitely. It was appropriate because, you

know, they had to protect the property. And I’m sure that it was

excessive to make a point as well, you know. For future, you know,

let them know, “Okay, you do this—this is what’s going to happen.”

You know what I mean? So they would—they made sure that point

was made, you know that they were—like I say, they were strong;

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19

they were aggressive. I think they made their point and I think we

made our point, you know. But I think they made it—because I don’t

think there was a riot after that [laughs], you know. They were very

aggressive, yes.

DT: Were there any city officials that you can recall, involved or—?

KS: None.

DT: —during the riot or in the aftermath?

KS: No city [unclear]. Of course, I remember Cecil, and Georgie Woods.

I don’t remember—I don’t remember any, because at that time there

was only a few city officials, I think, that was really happening. We

had one—I think we had one African American in the City Council at

the time. I don’t know if he was in—I think he was in in ’65,

Councilor McIntosh. And there was one African-American judge who

lived on Wellington Street, which was a street between Seventeenth

and Sixteenth, which is now the Twenty-Third, Twenty-Second Police

District in the back of it. But it was a judge, a magistrate, Campbell,

was the only person I knew, but I didn’t see him.

DT: In your opinion, what impact did the riot have on the growth and

development of your community after that?

KS: Well, it was a while. It had a devastating effect on the appearance of

the community, the economics of the community. And it seemed like

it would never get cleaned up, and it was—it wasn’t a quick clean-

up—I do remember that. And then, just to see all these—as you walk

on—as I stated earlier, to have this—it wasn’t Chestnut Street, but it

was our Chestnut Street, you know, to see all the boards, just

everything boarded up, and remnants of glass and, you know. And it

took a while. And some businesses tried to, you know, get back, but I

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20

think the fear in the merchants was: if it happened once, it can happen

again. And a lot of them lost—I don’t know what, you know, their

insurances was. You know, I don’t—I don’t think they even dreamed

of anything like this happening, you know, because we were—but it

never came back. We were never the same again. Our supermarket

was gone. There weren’t malls then; you could only get so much

from corner stores, you know. Our fresh meat market was gone for a

while; they got back up again. The hardware store was gone. So

everything—the movie was gone.

A lot—we, we didn’t realize it until later, you know, as I said,

as I got older in retrospect, that we had took our frustrations out on

ourselves for the most part, you know? We didn’t mean to, but that’s

what we did, you know, that’s what we—we did. And now we got to

find places to go, you know, and a lot of us couldn’t. I mean, the

stores down there, prices were ridiculous, too! You know, you know

what I mean, you know. But we definitely have a lot of money to go

downtown, you know, to Wanamaker’s or Gimbel’s, you know, like

we frequent the stores in the neighborhood. But it never came back

and, like I say, some of the merchants just gave up, you know. So it

was boarded up for a long time, you know.

And then, I guess, I remember Goldie Watson at the time. It

was just—that’s the first time I heard of—heard of the concept. It

was—it was a building on Broad Street called the Heritage House, and

Vera Guy, the late Vera Guy, and the late Goldie Watson—I don’t

know, I remember those two names. But Goldie Watson was one of

the first people I met that talked about community development, you

know, because that was the model of some programs started called

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21

Model Cities after that. I think Mayor Tate, and Charlie Bowser, and

a few other people, you know, got together, trying to see what could

they do now to try to bring this neighborhood back? And what can

they do to prevent this from happening again? So, I think Model

Cities was one of the programs that came out of that, you know, to

look at what we got—what’s there now, and how can we start a

renewal, you know, urban renewal, or build this community back up?

But it was a long time before it came back.

DT: So, and then your neighborhood was never the same, after the riot?

KS: Never the same. Even today, it’s never the same. I mean, Temple,

what Temple has done, along with some of the community

development corporations in partnership, you know, they’ve brought

back, [unclear]—but it’s not community now, it was more community

oriented. They want a lot of apartments, more people homes—owned

their homes, you know. But now more people are transient, you

know, in North Philly. And it’s never been the same, you know; it’s

never been the same.

DT: Okay. Now, overall, what would you say—how did Philadelphia

change as a result of the Columbia Avenue riot?

KS: Well, one of the things—I think it made—a lot of people were angry,

as we alluded to earlier about the aggression of the police, and people

were angry that the rioters did what they did, too, you know, they tore

up—tore up the neighborhood. But it let people that something’s

wrong—something’s seriously wrong here. You know, why would

people—what—you know when people, as I said, now, in retrospect,

you know, but when there’s unemployment, high unemployment, you

know, and, you know, and you have a family and you have the same

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aspirations as the guy in Northeast has for his family, you know, with

the income, you know, you want to be able to feed and clothe them.

And most of the jobs for African American wasn’t as popular as they

are today, you know. Even a man like my father and some of his

buddies had, you know, got the GI loan from World War II, it came

nice trades but they couldn’t even work, you know. So,

unemployment frustrated a lot of people, and you know, not having an

opportunity to, you know, to, I guess, experience the so-called

prosperity of America.

But it made—it put—it made people notice. As I said, the

programs like Model Cities started. So people would earnestly try to

do—but, again, trying to put a handle on where to start. I’m sure it

was a—what I learned, what I—you know, I’m fast forwarding right

now. It’s a total—it’s a total problem, you know. A lot of times

people look at the problems in the African American community, and

they—they pick out a piece that interests them, you know. But that

piece came as a result of another piece that’s not addressed. You

following me? Of course, so much money, so often there’s so

much—so many economic impact on some of these causes, people

that make so much wealth over the ignorance, over the lack of

something, that you tread on some people’s grounds. So then it

becomes political, you know, as to what’s feasible now, what we can

do now and what we can do later.

So, the housing was an issue, but it wasn’t the only issue.

Education was a issue, so education wasn’t addressed. You know,

when people don’t feel part of—if people don’t feel part of

citizenship, they don’t feel like they have a share, a piece of America,

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23

they’re going to throw their chicken on the street, because, hey, it’s a

white man’s street. He’ll clean it up, you know? They don’t feel that

they’re a citizen; they don’t feel that they’re a real citizen, that they’re

really a part of the fiber of the country. So, they don’t—they don’t

have—so, they don’t hold—they don’t feel this ownership and

responsibility. You following me?

DT: Mm-hm.

KS: So, those things were not addressed, you know what I mean? You

know, many people say, “Look, you’re a citizen, you know what I

mean? You have a right. The White House, you own that. Any

President’s home? That’s yours. Any public area, you own,” you

know. And so, education was not really addressed, so people can see

their real place, you know, even though racism was keeping people

from doing a lot of things, and keeping people from access to a lot of

opportunities. But it’s a mindset as well, you know what I mean?

Because, like I say, in our community we did have our own stores.

We had a—a lot of times I always used to say integration sometime

hurt us in a lot of ways, you know, because we were—well, we were

separate but we weren’t segregated in our minds, we were just

separate. And, but we had our shoe shops, you know and a young

man would see a man exchange dollars who was like him. So it was a

lot of subtle things that we that we got rid of and lost in the riots as

well, you know. And not having our neighborhoods self-sufficient as

it used to be years ago, prior to the heavy integration thrust. So, what

was the question? I just—I apologize.

[Pause in Recording]

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24

DT: Okay. Now, let’s talk about Girard College. What was the

neighborhood response to Girard College before attempts were made

to integrate?

KS: Well, I was in North Philadelphia at the lower end, again, at Sixteenth

and Columbia, so I can only go by what people told me that once

we—again, [unclear] Girard College. Some of the stories, who—

people who actually lived in the neighborhood would tell me when

they were young, they—“I didn’t even know what was behind that

wall.” It was ten-foot walls, you know. And, but then people would

tell me that they would see these little white boys come out, dressed

up in these pretty suits. And—but they had no idea it was—had the

admission policy that it had, at the will of Stephen Girard, to never let

anyone come in those walls except poor white male orphans. And

some people told me they used to throw things over the fence, you

know. And some of them used to tell me that they would see the little

white boys; they would pick at them, you know. But it was no—

nothing really said in the immediate community. Now, the more

sophisticated, like—men like Raymond Pace Alexander, and Cecil B.

Moore, who understood what was going on over there, you know,

made some attempts, you know, back in 1954, ’57, I think, to address

that issue. You know, but nothing was done until 1965 when it was

actually confronted, you know, there was a lot of oral arguments

about the will, the possibility of African-Americans entering the

school. But there was no confrontation. And that’s when I got

involved with Cecil Moore by joining the youth—the NAACP Youth

Council.

DT: What year was that?

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25

KS: ‘64, right after the riots, ’64, early ’65.

DT: So, in a sense, after the riots, it made—?

KS: Right, right, I became more conscious. Really, I became—I really

became more conscious. I was conscious of what was going on in

America in 1963, when they killed Medgar Evers. That’s when I, you

know, when they killed Medgar Evers, and I remember going

downtown and walking around. They had a—the city had a big

demonstration. Walking around city hall when Medgar Evers was

killed that June, ’63. And that was my first consciousness. But after

the riots, I guess, like I say you don’t—your history chooses you; you

don’t choose it, you know. I got involved with the NAACP, and in

early ’65, I guess around February, maybe March, I think the

discussion started happening about Girard College, planning, you

know, asking [unclear] confronted. It was a small group in May. The

original plan was it just a small group of us. We had met that night at

the office—at the NAACP office. And the idea was—with no public

announcement—okay, no: everybody [unclear] going to Girard

College—it was supposed to be a sneak attack. Because the idea was

to go over the wall through the—to go inside.

And that’s when I learned, for the first time, when we got out

there, that morning, May 1st, about six o’clock in the morning, there

was so many police! They had the whole wall—it was just amazing!

And that’s when I first learned about snitches, that somebody told the

police that we were coming there. Because we had not made a public

announcement that we were going to Girard College May 1st, early

morning, nor day, to confront this issue. So, we got there; there was a

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26

handful of us—Cecil, a few of his guys, and young people, you know,

a few young—young people.

DT: Do you recall any names?

KS: Stanley Branch. Stanley Branch was there. Cecil. I think Reverend

Shepherd was [unclear]—Lorenzo Shepherd. Let’s see. Rosemary

Ritter, she was—had Mama Mia; used to have a soul restaurant. She

was the head of the NAACP Youth Council. And, who else? Those

are the adults I remember. When we got there, there was police

everywhere. I mean, they had, I believe it was—they were toe-to-toe.

I mean, it seemed like if anybody wanted to rob something in

Philadelphia, a bank, I don’t think there was a police available, the

way it looked, to stop them, you know. But they were toe-to-toe;

barricades were up. It was amazing! But a few—Dwight Campbell,

who later became the Reverend Dwight Campbell, who is no longer

with us now, well, he went around back and took some trash cans

from a little hole where a cop was—wasn’t, and he went over the

wall. He was the first one arrested. So [claps] we made our issue,

that we were going to go over the wall. So, all day long we was just

walking in front of the—in front of the Girard College gate. And then

we started going around the wall.

And then one day, next day, next day, next day, more people

started coming, more people started coming. Got to the point where

some people would, you know—a lot of people were afraid to come

but, again, they just remember the year before, the riots and the police

agitation, and [unclear] anyway. So, it wasn’t like a big massive

group, you know? Because when I talk about Girard College, I hear a

lot of people say, “I was there. I was there.” And people were there,

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27

you know. But there was a core group that stayed there, you know,

maybe about twenty of us, actually stayed there every day, seven

months, seventeen days: all day, all night, walking. You know, we’d

take our little breaks, you know. But it was always somebody

walking in front of Girard College. We never let—we’d be there at

seven in the morning, start up again. We stayed [claps] there every

day, seven months, seventeen days, until they told us it was going into

arbitration and whatever, you know. So, people would—it got—it

became a symbol in the community. Some people didn’t want no

problem, didn’t want to go to jail because people were arrested.

At times there were confrontations with the police. Matter of

fact, the second we were there, the police actually ran their motor

cycles up on the sidewalks, running us over, knocking us over, you

know. And there were one incident where [coughs]—where the

police was beating one of our demonstrators, a brother named, no

longer with us, Freedom George—George Brown, from D.C. George

Brown came up because he heard about it, and got involved. He

became the leader of the young militants, who became the—Cecil B.

Moore’s direct action group. We were like his—you wanted

something done—give you an example, sort of fast-forward. Cecil

called us one day and said, “Look, we got to shut the post office

down.” Thirtieth—thirtieth—Thirtieth Street Post Office, because

they didn’t have—they wasn’t hiring African American citizens. And

four of us, me, another brother—two brothers—four brothers,

including me, and two sisters, we go down to the Post Office late at

night, and take—I took handcuffs, and handcuffed myself to the

Thirteenth Street Station Post Office on one side, the other brother on

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28

the other side; two brothers in the back door; and two sisters laid in

the street on marks to keep the mail trucks from turning in. So we

literally shut down the Post Office that evening, you know.

DT: So, how old were you while—?

KS: Sixteen.

DT: Oh. So, most of you were sixteen—?

KS: Sixteen, seventeen. I was the youngest. Most of them were eighteen;

a few were like twenty-one. But I was—

DT: What about the women? Do you recall their names?

KS: Karen Aspern was one of the young ladies and Brenda—not Brenda,

Bernyce Mills, Debbie Mills, her sister. They were the two laying in

the streets. And Stanley Brown, who’s no longer with us and Robert

Braswell, who’s no longer with us. They were the guys on the back

door at the Post Office. But all night long, you know, we was chained

to the Post Office and that morning they unhooked us. They arrested

us; they handcuffed us and put our—they handcuffed us like this, so

we had to hop. And I’ll never forget. We got to the Police

Administration building. They—they—there was a—there was a long

line of highway patrols and helmets there. We had to walk through

like a gauntlet; they were just beating us as we moved into the gate,

you know.

But, back to Girard College. So it became a symbol, because

people was, be going to work. They said, “Let me get up and walk

around.” They took a couple walks around the college, you know,

and go home, or go back to work, you know. So it became a symbol.

And, but the press was, you know—we were agitators, you know.

Because they had—they had—national police and the city had the

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29

power to dictate what they want to the press, you know. We were

looked at as kind of break a white man’s will. It was [unclear] that

press gave us. It was: “They break this man’s will, then none of your

wills are sacred,” you know. And, so, that was the issue. But, uh-uh-

uh, again, one night we stayed there and we slept in sleeping bags one

night, and the police took their—I have pictures of that. As a matter

of fact, Jack Franklin was there also. He took a lot of pictures. He

has actual pictures at night when we actually slept--slept out on the

sidewalk in sleeping bags, some of us, and the police took their jeeps

and backed them up, and ran their motors and carbon monoxide, and

made a lot of people sick. [Unclear] Girard Avenue—I mean, west of

the street that runs parallel to Girard—not Girard Avenue, but right

along the wall. There was smoke everywhere, you know, just running

their motors, you know. A lot people had to be hospitalized, you

know. But several confrontations with the police. They were always

agitating us.

And I always tell people this and I remember when we were

singing a freedom song, one of the things that we did: we always

made up songs that were indicative to what was going on that

particular day, the incident taking place. And one of the songs we

made up one day—the Salvation Army used to come and bring the

police donuts and coffee, you know. And I tell people this—they

didn’t give us nothing. No water. You know, because, again, we

were looked at as agitators. The Salvation Army, you know! We

fighting for our dignity and our freedom and access, whatever. But

Salvation Army used to bring the police donuts and water and stuff.

And we used to sing a song; we made up a song that used to irritate

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30

them that said, [sings] “You can’t live off baloney and lemonade,

lemonade, lemonade. You can’t live off baloney and lemonade. You

got to go home and get that steak.” They used to be beating their

sticks along the barricade, you know! But, when we were arrested,

we would come right back the next day. We’d just sing a freedom

song, “We don’t mind going to jail because Georgie Woods” or we’d

make up somebody’s name, obligate them to pay our bail. And that

was the line in the song, you know. And most of the songs were call

and response, you know. So I got very popular with singing, you

know, about Girard College, and that’s what led to me doing a lot of

singing at a lot of the marches around the country. I was able to sing

a little, most of the freedom songs on the James Murder March from

Memphis to Jackson with Dr. King every day was—that march lasted

a month and two weeks, and we walked from Memphis to Jackson.

We were gassed on the way by the Mississippi State Police.

But, so Girard College was a symbol that a lot of people agreed

on, especially African American people, and a lot of Caucasians. It

wasn’t always a black picket line. We had a lot of—especially the

Episcopal Church, you know, Father Zimmerman, Father Washington,

a lot of Episcopal Church. And then you had a lot of, you know,

Jewish groups, you know, would come out, but it wasn’t a total,

always a black, but predominantly African American picket line.

And, again, as the issues and the people started—it was in the paper

every day, you know: “Some blacks at Girard College, demonstrated,

arrested, confrontation with the police.” Something would happen

around the back of the wall and you know, you know. And then

people—I guess a sense of obligation came over the African

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31

American community, because more and more people start coming.

There was more and more people coming. And sometimes we would

lay in Girard Avenue and just stop—stop the trolley, fifteen trolley;

we had to lay on the east side, the west side, north side, and south

side, so east trolley couldn’t go; west trolley couldn’t go. We shut

down that area, and the police come and we would just do things to—

to let them know that we are serious about this issue, and we’re—

we’re—we’re going to agitate you as you call it, agitate. Yes, we are.

We are going to agitate you until something happens, you know. So,

we were there to stay; it wasn’t a picnic for us.

And then when Dr. King came, that sort of gave us—there was

already credibility, but when Dr. King came, that really gave us that

national—it was national already, but he really blew it up, you know,

when he came and spoke there, you know. And one of the things he

said was that there were walls—that there were walls in Jericho that

had come down, and the same thing happened to the walls at Girard

College. So, he was very motivating. And there was a lot of talk

about Cecil didn’t want Doc to come and, you know. I never was

privy to their conversation, you know what I mean? I heard it, you

know, but when Doc and Cecil finally came together, nobody could

think that conflict ever took place. You know. I mean, people—

everybody’s territorial. Everybody’s organization, you know, you

feel like it’s your pet peeve, you know, [several words unclear], you

know, and so you kind of want to—I don’t know how to say this, but

you know, you want to get credit of what you’re doing, you know

what I mean?

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32

But Girard College was a issue that really needed everybody’s

effort, you know: religious community effort, local community effort,

you know, all of the organizations. Everybody came—CORE,

SNCC— so it became really a focus, you know. [Coughs] So,

eventually, after seven months and seventeen days, we got the order

from Cecil to stop the demonstrations, send the—decisions were

going to be made, and then a decision came down that December that

the school’s going to be integrated, so, you know. Then we tried

doing other things the same: slumlords, dealing with the slumlords

issues, because a lot of homes were burning up, and people, the

slumlords would not take care of the homes. There were a couple of

deaths, you know, [unclear]. And they was going to places in the

South, you know. But Girard College was really a—it was sort of like

my incubator.

DT: Yeah. Now, did city officials support integration attempts at Girard?

KS: If they did, I mean, I wasn’t privy to that kind of knowledge. I mean,

Charlie Bowser was Deputy Mayor at the time and Mayor Tate was

the Mayor, and Rizzo was Police Commissioner. There was a

sentiment, I think, you know, the city, but again, the Mayor is the

executive officer for the city and the Police Commissioner is his

employee—employee. And the business community’s screaming and

the white community is saying, “You just can’t just have it” [unclear]

you know, break this man’s rules. So he was—he was like, I guess he

had to juggle two opinions, you know. But he—I’ve never heard the

Mayor say anything negative, you know, about [unclear] there. If

anything, he was hoping it would just always be peaceful and a lot of

time it wasn’t a peaceful demonstration. We had the right to protest

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33

but whether or not we had the right to break a man’s will, was just

known to be sacred, you know, the issue.

DT: You mentioned that it wasn’t always peaceful. Why wasn’t it always

peaceful?

KS: Sometime the police would—sometime we would agitate the police

and sometime they would agitate us, you know. Sometime we were

just bunch of—we would say things to each other, you know, and a lot

of time the police would get—get us back late at night, you know,

when we were on our way home, or somebody, you know—but they

always had—they were the police! You know what I mean? But

right there at Girard College, we said what we wanted to say to them,

you know what I mean?

DT: Was there news coverage the whole time?

KS: Oh, news, press, yeah, there was always somebody out there covering

it. There was one African American photographer, real popular,

named Bud Outlaw; he was the first—only African American, I think,

that worked for UPI. And then you had actual press-press and that

gave us that national piece; he was one of those national people that

was there a lot. And then you had just the local press, the Daily News,

the Tribune was definitely there. There was another photographer that

used to be a very good friend of Malcolm, named Stan Daniels. He

provided a lot of—of photographs that a lot of papers that wasn’t there

[unclear]. I guess he was giving them to the papers. There was an

incident one time when the police attacked—and I say they did it.

There was a confrontation, and the police just started attacking the

demonstrators. [Coughs] And they was beating one demonstrator so

bad, named Freedom George—that’s the gentleman that I said was the

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34

leader of the Young Militants—that the Police Commissioner;

Commissioner Leary was the police commissioner at the time—came

in between the police and these officers beating this demonstrator.

And they—before they realized who he was, they were hitting him!

And they was actually a photograph in the newspaper with Police

Commissioner Leary—he’s bleeding, shirt torn—and Freedom

George, he’s bleeding from the head, you know. And I actually saw

that, I was there. The police, they—they were so irate and so angry

and so—how do I say it? Hateful. But then they realized that he was

beating the Commissioner because he had—he saw this and said, “All

right, let’s stop this! Let’s stop this!”

DT: So, why did they attack him? Freedom?

KS: Freedom George?

DT: Uh-huh.

KS: You know, like I said, it’s always some conversation going on, you

know, some police would say something, you know what I mean?

And you know, and then an order would come: okay like, the police

would say, “All right. All right, disperse!” Then ran their motor

cycles on the sidewalk. “You know, we wasn’t doing anything

officer,” and the motor cycles jumped up on the sidewalk! You know,

so we reacted to what they did a lot of time, and they reacted to a lot

of things that we did, you know. Like we would try to go over the

wall, you know, and that—that would make officers go and pull you,

and you pull on us, we going to come and pull on you! So it was—it

was a back and forth thing. You know, neither one of us liked each

other; you know what I mean. But that particular night, they really—

and then it cooled down for a few weeks, cooled down. But there’s

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always some—like I said, there was always something going on,

either between the demonstrators and the police in front of Girard

College, or somewhere around the back of Girard. Because

remember, we walked around it. You know, we might see them on

the back side; we’d do something. And all the cops would run around

there, you know.

So, it was—it wasn’t cordial or—there was one police officer—

it was a—it was a unit called Disobedience Unit, which is now called

Civil Disobedience, I think. But it was headed by—it was headed by

a Police Commissioner Mears. I mean, not Commissioner Mears,

probably Inspector Mears. But his subordinate, who was actually on

site all the time with the unit, was Lieutenant Fencl, George Fencl [?],

and he was a really nice guy. And he—he sort of had to balance his

loyalty to the police department and his loyalty to—not loyalty, but he

had to develop a relationship, because he saw we wasn’t really out

there trying to hurt nobody, you know what I mean? But a lot of

times, you know, we were wrong, and a lot of times the police were

wrong. You following me? As a matter of fact, sometimes we

were—some of us would be getting arrested, and I know incidents

where Lieutenant Fencl would ask us—knew you were going to get

going to get arrested, so, “They guy’s going to be here who’s going to

arrest you.” You know what I mean? Or the arrest was soft—a soft

arrest, instead of a hard arrest. You following me? So this George

Fencl would—

DT: What’s the difference between a soft and a hard arrest?

KS: Well, a soft arrest is just somebody, you know just, “Okay, come on,”

and lock you up. And a hard arrest is when they dragging you or

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when they hit you, you know, pulling on you, you know. So, George

Fencl, Lieutenant Fencl at the time, he really—that’s when we learned

that there’s police—police department is not out to—all the police are

not out to get you. And I think that when they—the authorities from

the police department and city officials established the George Fencl

Award, I think that was a good award, because he really set a—a line,

or he set a standard for community policing. And that’s what I’m

trying to say. This George Fencl Award, you know, and I think the

police officers that have gotten that award since that, you know, have

shown that community relationship—the community policing, as

opposed to occupation police officers. [Coughs]

DT: So, how prominent was the NAACP presence during the

demonstration?

KS: Very prominent. Matter of fact, it—Cecil Moore was—Cecil B.

Moore was the kind of guy that he thought the NAACP—Gerard

Collins brought the NAACP out of this—it was more into a—he’s—

what he envisioned, you know, but we don’t. We didn’t know what

for us, from the adult organizational structure, you know. But he

often said in public that it had turned into a social—socialite thing, a

lot of party, you know, drinking, and you know, not really getting

down [claps] with the issues that he was establishing, at least in

Philadelphia. And it got to a point where he thought it was—he was

non-violent; we were part of a non-violent, but Cecil believed that you

had a right to defend yourself. So a lot of times, Cecil when would go

out to—to address issues that affected the African American

community, there was always confrontation, that most people would

have backed down from the first confrontation, but Cecil would

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continue on, even after he was—like in, when he was trying to get

African Americans to work on the work site at Shortway Mansions.

You know, it was one of the bloody demonstrations led by Cecil, you

know. So, he had a friction—there was friction between Roy Wilkins,

who was Executive Director of the NAACP at the time, and Cecil, to

the point when he tried to set Cecil down in Philadelphia. And we

had to go—matter of fact, we went to Boston to protest why they was

beating on Cecil, and I ended up being on the front page of the Boston

newspaper [laughs], you know, in the demonstration.

But Cecil was, you know, he was a ex-Marine, World War II,

man who was trained to defend honor and dig—integrity. He believed

in America. He believed in—in a better America. He wasn’t trying

to—trying to—he wasn’t fighting for a black America, he was

fighting for a better America. He believed that time had come for a

lot of this nonsense of race discrimination to end and he was—see

what he could do. And he was an attorney, and a very good attorney.

You know, he had one of the biggest law offices—law firms, in the

city, you know. I think he was one of the first attorneys to have his

own courtroom, he had so many cases, you know. And he did so

many free cases—he made some money, too, but he had free cases.

And you know, Cecil was the man! You know, if you wanted a

lawyer, you wanted Cecil, you know. Somebody [several words

unclear], but the majority of the people in the community, you know,

respected Cecil B. Moore because he stood up! You know, he wasn’t

a guy who would stand back and say, “You do this.” He was always

out front, you know. He was always out front. And he made sure that

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he took care of you, you know. You went to jail; he made sure you

get out.

And not just him; we had others. We had—had this one

gentleman, became the judge later, I can’t remember. It’s Marty

Williams. He had a—has a group of attorneys, you know, that

worked with him, you know, to make sure that he could cover his base

legally when people were arrested, you know, Because he couldn’t get

everywhere at one time, because there were different arrests—

different things going on all over the city. But Cecil was a man of his

word and he was a strong image of a African American man, you

know, in the city. And he smoked his cigars and talked his stuff, but

he backed up what he said, you know. And Georgie Woods, which

was another very prominent African American leader in the city,

who—very personal friend of Dr. King, you know, was right there all

the time with Cecil.

When Georgie Woods, even though he was—became popular

through radio and the Uptown Theater, but he put his money where

his mouth was. He took all those busses to the March on Washington.

He helped support King; he was in Birmingham, you know. He was

out there on the front line all the time. He’s been arrested, even been

arrested. So him and Cecil Moore and George—Georgie Woods—

being two popular, known leaders, you know. He had other support;

he had leaders like Savage—what was his name? There’s a lot of

names I can’t remember now, you know!

DT: Stanley Branch was there.

KS: Stanley Branch! He came out of Chester, you know, he was in the

NAACP in Chester, you know. You know, Chester was a big clan

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town; we got—he used to fight that stuff. But Stanley Branch and this

guy named Savage; he was an attorney, Savage, who had—

DT: Were there women involved?

KS: Yeah. You had—you had Lettie Mae and Christine Chord [?]. You

had Miss Marv Robinson, who was an elderly woman—she was a

business woman, African American business woman. You had,

what’s the—I want to think. I see her face. You had Vera Gunn, very

popular; she was there. You had—you had Goldie Watson; you

had—who was this sister, now? I see her face so clear, but I don’t

know her name. I can’t remember her name, but there were women.

It wasn’t—Marv Robinson, she was—she was the oldest woman and

Marv Robinson was our Queen Mother. New York had Queen

Mother. Marv Robinson was our Queen Mother, you know. She

didn’t take no tea for the fever, she’d be out there walking and

singing, you know, and—see, people knew that you could go to jail.

You could get arrested. You could get hurt. So, when we sang the

songs that we’re not afraid of going to jail, or before we’d be a slave

we’d be buried in our grave, we meant that. You know, we were

young, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen years old, we [unclear]. All we

knew was this was the wrong issue and what we could do to correct it,

you know.

And I think that we look at history, I don’t think anything ever

changed unless it was young people who did it. And it was the right

place at the right time and I think that they understood that, you know.

Because, as I said, we went to jail; we’d come right back the next day.

They’d beat us up, we’d just lick our wounds, come right back the

next day. We wanted to be in front [claps] of their faces every day

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until that issue was solved, and Girard College was one and the other

issues the same way. But there were a lot of women. It wasn’t—the

women—there were—their mother nature, maternal nature, the

mother was there, because you know sometimes they got to cool us

down, you know what I mean? And we respected our elders, you

know what I mean? Because sometimes we were hot-headed and we

could have gotten hurt or been—been arrested for no—you know,

more times than we were arrested. You know, you can get hot-headed

young people, you know. So they not only played the leadership role

for us as strong women, they also played their motherly role, you

know, and calmed us down, you know what I mean. “Now, boy,” you

know what I mean? [Laughs] And we respected it. We were like,

today, they’ll say something to you, you know—the adults were afraid

to say something to these children today! But we respected our elders

and I’m glad they were there.

You know, I probably wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for a

woman like Marv Robinson, you know. Oh, Gertrude Barnes—that’s

the lady’s name, Gertrude Barnes, a very popular sister. Strong

NAACP, African, and board member or, you know, one of the

officials of NAACP. And these were—they weren’t office women.

These women were out there! They were professional women, the

women. She was a professional woman. Goldie Watson was a

professional woman. Marv Robinson had a beautiful business; she

was a business woman. So it wasn’t, you know, just housewives, as

they say, you know. But they were people who had careers and had

things on the line, you know what I mean? A lot of—I’m sure a lot of

their businesses was affected by their public advocacy, you know, for

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change, you know. But they, like us, they were there until the issue

was solved.

DT: Now, the day that Martin Luther King came to Girard—were you

there that day?

KS: Yes, definitely.

DT: Could you—what was your observation during the time that he was

there for the event?

KS: Well, we knew he was coming and as a—before, as I said, my role

was—I didn’t choose the role but just so happened that I was drawing

most—I was real popular with singing, but most of the freedom songs

were called on the spot. “Do you want your freedom?” “Oh, yeah!”

You know, a lot of people, you know, would do that. But I became,

you know, pretty popular with the songs, so I was one of the people

they used to get the crowd ready, and the Doc came up on a flatbed

truck. There was an elderly gentleman named—what’s his name?

Willis. Yeah, named Willis, but he was a tractor-trailer driver, so he

was the guy who always supplied the stages for the demonstrations,

when he—because he would bring the trailer and drop it, and it would

be our stage. That’s the one the Doc was on. And then, when Doc

spoke at—the Doc spoke at Fortieth and Lancaster, he dropped the

trailer there, you know. So that would be because we would use the

trailers as our stage, you know. Like today you can rent a stage from

the city, but we used tractor-trailers, and the trailers from tractor—

your trailer from the tractor-trailer as our stages. So, that day

everybody was there. I mean, all the, you know, ministers, everyone,

and there was thousands of people. You just look down: hundreds of

people, just all drawed out when Dr. King came.

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DT: And by that time, you mentioned at first there was a little tension

between him and Cecil B. Moore?

KS: Yes, that was the word going around. Like I say, I never—and I was

around Cecil a lot. The only time I wasn’t around Cecil some time—

when Georgie Woods would always say, “Yeah, Freedom, you used

to be always hanging around, but when we’s going in the bar, you

start—you can’t come in this bar, boy.” You know, because you

know, a lot of their decisions were made in bars, you know. But I

never—I never was—felt that, you know. That’s—I heard that later,

you know what I mean? It was nothing like buzz—that wasn’t a buzz

among the core people in the group, that Cecil had a dislike for Dr.

King. You know, if something would get off in the press, and some

people don’t believe anything unless it’s on television anyway, you

know.

So, but in the core group of us, we never felt that, because we

were Cecil’s—he was our leader and our, like our elder. So, if he

didn’t like something, we tended to not like it. And I don’t never

remember me thinking I didn’t like Dr. King, or didn’t want him to

come here, and if Cecil don’t like him, we don’t like him. And I’m

talking this core group, you know. So, you know, but you’ve got

people who can always agitate to divide us, you know. But I never

met nobody was actually was at a—in a room, as we say, this is where

the conversation went verbatim. Cecil would said, “I don’t want Dr.

King in my town. This is my damn town.” That’s the way he was

portrayed, you know. But when they hit that platform truck, Cecil

Moore and Dr. King, I’m telling you, he fired them people up and that

increased our numbers after that, you know what I mean, because the

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more numbers you have, the more numbers in a demonstration, it

shows the seriousness of it and it gives you—let people know this is a

serious issue, that not only this little core group who started this thing

was concerned about, but this is now something that people are really

concerned about. Look at the numbers, you know. And Dr. King—

after Doc’s visit there, it really brought the numbers, you know, after

that.

[End of interview]