Here's Where It Gets Interesting - 159. Momentum: The Ripples Made by Ordinary People, Part 14

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

On today’s episode in our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon talks about some of the most important components of a successful movement: money and reputation. Movements take a lot of financial support and many of the organizers worked day jobs with humble salaries. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? He made $8,000 a year in his position as a minister. But organizing rallies and marches and lectures… filing lawsuits and traveling from city to city? It all costs money. Learn who supported the work of some of the most influential Civil Rights leaders and organizations. Their celebrity status may surprise you! Sharon also talks about the 1958 and 1959 Youth Marches for Integrated Schools. Hear how organizers planned effective, large-scale demonstrations, how they were received in Washington D.C., and what newly published book threatened the reputation of the marches and potentially had a hand in their outcomes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Whether you're helping that special person take their content up a notch or adding that extra quality to your own shoots, Canon's got you covered. Shop the Level up sales event today at canon.ca. Hello friends, welcome. Welcome to the 14th episode in our series, Momentum. For the past several weeks, we've been bringing you the stories of people and events that became a catalyst for a movement. And this movement has been gathering momentum for the better part of the decade. And now in 1958, we see that momentum spread far and wide across the nation.

Let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. work all night on a drink of rum the song you hear playing in the background might feel familiar to you. It recently made the rounds on TikTok, playing the background of viral videos of dancing cats. In 1988, it was used in a particularly famous scene in the movie Beetlejuice, with the actress Catherine O'Hara and a dinner party full of guests dancing to the song. And before that,

the Banana Boat song was sung and recorded by Harry Belafonte in 1956. The traditional Calypso-style song is Jamaican in origin and describes dock workers who spend the evenings loading bananas onto ships. They eagerly await for the tallyman to come and take his note so they can go home. tallyman to come and take his notes so they can go home. Galifante had been singing in clubs for a few years when he recorded his album Calypso, on which Banana Boat is one of the tracks. The album and the song skyrocketed his prolific career as a popular recording artist. Calypso was the first album in the world to sell over a million copies in a year. But how does all of this connect to the civil rights movement? Through money.

Movements take a lot of financial support, and many of the organizers worked day jobs with humble salaries. of the organizers worked day jobs with humble salaries. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he made $8,000 a year in his position as a minister. But organizing rallies and marches and lectures and filing lawsuits and traveling from city to city, it all cost money. There were many patrons of the civil rights movement, a number of financial supporters and foundations that funneled money into litigation, leadership programs, overhead costs, etc. But Harry Belafonte was one of the most effective and probably the most famous benefactor who helped financially support the cause. Harry Belafonte was born in Harlem in 1927 to Jamaican immigrant parents. For a number of years when he was a schoolboy, Harry lived with his grandmother in Jamaica, returning to New York when he was in high school. He graduated from high school in New York. And he joined the Navy

and served during World War II, after which he found a job as a janitor's assistant. and served during World War II, after which he found a job as a janitor's assistant. In one of the buildings where he worked, a tenant gave him theater tickets as a tip. Harry fell in love with the entertainment at the American Negro Theater, and he befriended another struggling actor his own age. Maybe you've heard of him. His name is Sidney Poitier. him. His name is Sidney Poitier. By the end of the 1940s, both men were taking acting classes at the dramatic workshop of the New School. They were working alongside the likes of Marlon Brando and Bea Arthur. Bea Arthur was on the Golden Girls, in case you didn't know that. Belafonte used the GI Bill to pay for these classes, but it wasn't enough. He began utilizing his entertainment talents outside of the theater, but not off the stage to make money. He sang in

Harlem nightclubs, his smooth baritone bringing in the crowds. In fact, during his first appearance, his backup band was the Charlie Parker Band with Charlie Parker on saxophone, Max Roach on the drums, and Miles Davis playing trumpet. Those are some jazz legends, if you're not familiar with them. Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, by the way, remained lifelong friends. Poitier died this past January of 2022 at 94 and Belafonte said of him for over 80 years Sidney and I laughed cried and made as much mischief as we could he was truly my brother and partner in trying to make this world a little better. He certainly made mine a whole lot better. Belafonte was a natural entertainer. He won his first Tony Award in 1954 at age 27,

and he started making a name for himself outside of New York. He started performing with people in the Rat Pack, like Sammy Davis Jr. in Las Vegas. He was young and handsome and had this sort of charm and confidence that made him one of the few Black performers that found crossover success with white audiences. And so as his musical career grew, Belafonte found a mentor and friend in Paul Robeson, one of the most successful Black entertainers of the early 20th century. Robeson, if you remember, helped write and organize the We Charge Genocide petition that was delivered to the United Nations. Belafonte knew a friendship with Robeson would lead to scrutiny and blacklisting by the FBI. But he also knew he was ready to make sacrifices to help support civil rights causes. Between the years of 1954

and 1960, Harry Belafonte, reaching the peak of his fame, refused to perform in the American South where schools were defying the Brown versus Board of Education decision, and Black school children were still not welcome in white schools. By 1960, he was making history as the first African American to win an Emmy Award for his CBS Variety special, which was called The Revlon Review, like Revlon Cosmetics. The Revlon Review, Tonight with Belafonte. Behind the scenes, however, he was humbly supporting the King family in whatever way he could. Coretta Scott King said,

Whenever we got into trouble or whenever tragedy struck, Harry always came to our aid with his generous heart wide open. Belafonte paid for babysitters and housekeepers that allowed the Kings to work late nights and travel. Harry Belafonte had met the King family in the late 1950s. He had appeared with Coretta Scott King and Duke Ellington at the Salute to Montgomery, which was a December 1956 fundraising event in New York. And a few months later, while he was participating in the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C., he remarked to a friend, in Washington, D.C., he remarked to a friend,

We come down here like this and say our peace, and then it's all over. Reverend Martin Luther King has to go back and face it all over again. In 1958 and 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. served as an honorary chairman of two youth marches for integrated schools. These were large-scale demonstrations that took place in Washington, D.C., and they were aimed at expressing support to speed up integration in schools. If you've been listening to this whole series, you know that the American public has this perception that the Supreme Court said school integration needed to happen in 1954, and the entire country jumped and said, okay, we'll get right to it. That is not the case. And you may have heard in our previous episode about Prince Edward County, Virginia,

that closed their schools for five years, so they didn't have to integrate. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together, we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio! in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories

from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new

Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday

with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. In August of 1958, a small committee led by labor leader A. Philip Randolph began organizing the first Youth March for Integrated Schools. Randolph said the purpose of the demonstration was to combine a moral appeal, reveal the support of liberal white people and Negroes together, the support of liberal white people and Negroes together, and generally to give people in the North an opportunity to show their solidarity with Negro children in the South who have become the first line of defense in the struggle for integrated schools. The first line of defense. First line of defense. That really struck me. Children were the first line of defense.

The march represented a way for multiple civil rights organizations and activists to work together on a large scale, combining all of their efforts to this a coalition. And this was not just to send a message to their own communities, but to the very heart of the entire nation in Washington, D.C. While there were thousands of participants at both marches, they were planned by a few key chairpeople. Martin Luther King, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Bayard Rustin, Ruth Bunch, Jackie Robinson, and Daisy Bates. On October 25, 1958, an integrated crowd of around 10,000 participants marched peacefully down Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. to the Lincoln Memorial. It's a photo taken from this march that is the image of our Momentum series. Children marching alongside adults and white Americans marching alongside Black Americans.

and white Americans marching alongside Black Americans. Many who marched were young high school students, teenagers. Once the march reached the Lincoln Memorial, two things happened. Coretta Scott King opened up an afternoon of speeches on behalf of her husband, who was recovering from being stabbed while in New York. I told you that story in a previous episode. from being stabbed while in New York. I told you that story in a previous episode. And Harry Belafonte led a small integrated group of students to the White House to meet President Eisenhower. Although Martin Luther King could not attend the march as he originally planned, he sent enthusiastic support and Coretta read his words to the crowd. He said, there is a unique element in this demonstration. It is a young people's march. You are proving that the youth of America is freeing itself of the prejudices of an older and darker time in our history. Keep marching and show the pessimists

and the weak of spirit that they are wrong. Keep marching and don't let them silence you. Keep marching and resist injustice with the firm, non-violent spirit you demonstrated today. I love that so much. And in many ways, that is the work of each new generation to free itself of the prejudices of an older and darker time in our history. and darker time in our history. Belafonte and his delegated students didn't fare so well when they got to the White House. They were told they couldn't meet with President Eisenhower or any of his assistants. After staging a half-hour picket, the students left a list of demands to be given to the president. Following the success of this first march, they began planning for a second one the following spring.

Working tirelessly to make sure the second march was just as successful and effective as the first was a woman named the First Lady of Little Rock. Daisy Bates, like so many other civil rights leaders, had made activism her life's work. When Daisy was a toddler, her mother, Millie Riley, was raped and murdered by three white men in their small community in Arkansas, and Daisy was sent to live with family friends. She never saw her father again. Millie's murderers were never found or even charged, and the police didn't really even investigate the crime. When she was told the truth of her mother's death as a young girl, she was consumed by thoughts of vengeance. She later remembered in her autobiography, my life now had a secret goal, to find the men who had done this horrible thing to my mother.

Her adoptive father, Orly, who she loved very much, gave her advice before he died when she was a teenager. He said to her, hate can destroy you, Daisy. If you hate, make it count for something. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the soul of every black man and woman. Hate the insults hurled at us. And then try to do something about it, or your hate won't spell a thing. Daisy married a man named Lucius Bates in 1942, and they settled in Little Rock, Arkansas, where they started their own newspaper. Daisy, remembering her calling to make her voice count, got to work. The Arkansas State Press was one of the only Black-run newspapers solely dedicated

to the civil rights movement, and Daisy was both an editor and a contributor. For many years, Daisy served as the president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP. She remembers being persecuted during that time, saying, As president, I was singled out for special treatment. Two flaming crosses were burned on our property. The first, a six-foot gasoline-soaked structure, was stuck in our front lawn just after dusk. At the base of the cross was scrawled, go back to Africa. KKK. The second cross was placed across the street from our house. It was lit and the flames began to catch. Fortunately, the fire was discovered by a neighbor and we extinguished it before any

serious damage had been done. In 1954, after the Brown versus the Board of Education ruling, Daisy Bates began gathering Black students to enroll at all white schools. And when white schools refused to let Black students enroll, she used her space in the Arkansas State Press to publish the names of the schools that did follow the federal mandate. When the National NAACP began focusing on integration in Arkansas schools, they relied on Daisy to plan the strategy. She was prepared with the Little Rock Nine. It was Daisy Bates who chose the nine students to integrate into Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. And they were met with open hostility.

They were barred from having access to the classrooms, and the National Guard was called out. Daisy, however, was ready. She planned for ministers to escort the nine children into the school, two in front of the children and two behind them, and she thought that not only would that help to protect the children physically, but it would serve as a powerful symbol against the bulwark of segregation. She regularly drove the students to school, and she worked tirelessly to ensure that they were protected from violent crowds. She advised the group. She joined the school's parent organization. Martin Luther King sent her a telegram in September of 1957 as she and the Little Rock Nine faced violence and opposition. He told her to adhere rigorously to the way of nonviolence despite being terrorized, stoned, and threatened by ruthless mobs. He said, world opinion is with you. The moral conscience

of millions of white Americans is with you. King was a guest of Daisy and Lucius Bates in May of 1958 when he gave a commencement speech at a college in Arkansas. He asked her to speak to his congregation in Montgomery later that year, and she was also elected to the executive committee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. And it was she who began planning the youth marches for integrated schools. The second youth march was intended to build upon the efforts of the earlier march. Part of the plan was to hold a large event where the leaders could circulate a petition that would urge the government to take expeditious action

and pass a program that would ensure the orderly and speedy integration of U.S. schools. On April 28, 1959, an estimated 26,000 participants marched down the National Mall to the Sylvan Theater, where speeches were given by a now-recovered Dr. King, A. Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins. Another delegation of students marched to the White House to present their demands to Eisenhower. This time, they met with his deputy assistant, Gerald Morgan, who told them that the president is just as anxious as you are to see an America where discrimination does not exist and where equality of opportunity is available to all. Well, the sheer number of participants made the 1959 march a success.

It was also marred by, you guessed it, accusations of communist infiltration. Rumors were spread by opponents to discredit the event and deflate its impact. If the public thought the marching crowd was full of communists, they could dismiss it altogether. Or worse, they could associate communist threat with civil rights activism. The day before the march, Randolph, Wilkins, and King released a statement denying this kind of involvement. They said, the sponsors of the march have not invited communists or communist organizations, nor have they invited the KKK or

White Citizens Council. We don't want the participation of these groups, nor of individuals or other organizations that hold similar views. Fear of communism was still looming large throughout the country. J. Edgar Hoover had recently published a 350-page book titled Masters of Deceit, The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It. After a brief discussion of the background and general purposes of communism, J. Edgar Hoover devoted most of his writing to the American Communist Party, outlining its organization, goals, and its tactics. He designed the book as a guide for the average American citizen, giving them tactics on how to combat communism. In the book's final chapter, he writes,

American education, of course, does not make communists. Communist education does. Communism to survive must depend upon a constant program of education because communism needs educated people, even though it distorts the use to which their education is put. Thus, we need to show our young people, particularly those endowed with high intellects, that we in our democracy need what they have to offer. It's easy to see J. Edgar Hoover's underlying message, right? Like any threat to American education as it currently exists must have communist roots. And it's even easier to see how the American public could and did connect the push for integrated schooling with the threat that communism was poised to infiltrate white schools. Undoubtedly, the book affected public

opinion during the youth marches. It made people hesitant to join the movement or even believe that its efforts were not rooted in communist persuasion. And no one knew of the power of the movement's public image quite like Bayard Rustin. Rustin's name has come up a few times in our previous episodes as a Quaker pacifist and a advisor to Dr. King, his relationship with the civil rights movement was long and fruitful, but it was also tainted by his public image, first as a member of the Communist Party and after as an out gay man. While a student at City College of New York in the 1930s, Rustin joined the Young Communist League, or the YCL. He was drawn to what he believed was the communist commitment to racial justice.

Rustin left the organization a few years later in 1941 when the Communist Party shifted their emphasis away from civil rights activity. But the damage had been done. from civil rights activity. But the damage had been done. His time with the YCL was well documented by the FBI, and they kept files on Rustin and his activities well into the 1960s. In 1953, Rustin was arrested in Pasadena, California after he was discovered having romantic encounters with men. He pled guilty to a charge related to that and served 60 days in jail, and he was registered as a sex offender. With the FBI's file on Rustin expanding, he was forced into resigning his position with an organization called the Fellowship of Reconciliation. And he continued his long career

in activism, but he took a quieter role strategizing and organizing behind the scenes in an effort to not taint the image of the civil rights movement. Many historians agree that for decades, Rustin remained overlooked as a key player in the early fight for integration and civil rights. An editor of his collected letter said early on he wasn't so well known because the civil rights leaders tried to keep him in the shadows. They were fearful of being by the fact that he was gay. It was Rustin who would later help plan the 1963 March on Washington. Side note, a movie about Bayard Rustin is coming out in 2022. One of the most famous people attached to the project is Chris Rock, who is playing Roy Wilkins. Even though the organizers of the youth marches had hoped to spur Congress and the president into action,

they failed to pass any additional legislation to speed up school integration. But the events had symbolic power. King reassured the participants, telling them, in your great movement to organize a march for integrated schools, you have awakened on hundreds of campuses throughout the land a new spirit of social inquiry to the benefit of all Americans. And as for Harry Belafonte, he continued to financially support both the King family and the civil rights movement. It was Harry Belafonte who paid Martin Luther King's bail money when he was arrested and put in the Birmingham jail in 1963. He was also the financial benefactor of the 1961 Freedom Rides, and he provided $60,000 to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, the group that organized many of the anti-segregation sit-ins.

And Daisy Bates and Bayard Rustin, they jumped feet first into the 1960s. They planned and executed more successful civil rights events and marches than almost anyone else. Join me next time when we talk about some of the mothers of the movement. Perhaps they are not on your t-shirts and posters, but they should be. I think you'll really like this upcoming episode. Thank you for joining me and I'll see you soon. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling

extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.