While the World Watched (10 page)

I stood at the door and looked out over the sanctuary. People packed the main floor and balcony. Most of the people I saw looked like me—about my age, some younger and some older. They were all black. I wasn't surprised, but I didn't quite know what the end would be for this kind of gathering of young people.

Something happened inside me that moment.

I don't know what this is, but I know I want to be part of it.
I immediately made up my mind to join them. I went back into the office, put away my work, and walked into the sanctuary. I took a seat on the right side of the church in the middle section. When I looked up, I saw other preachers sitting with Dr. King. I knew all their names, thanks to their media presence: James Bevel, Jesse Jackson, Fred Shuttlesworth, Andrew Young, and Ralph Abernathy.

I had seen Dr. King on television, but I'd never met him. When I saw him in the front of my own church, I thought he looked even more impressive in person. He just had a certain presence. And I was amazed at his gift for oratory. He spoke in a way that made me want to hang onto his every word. I sat spellbound in my pew and soaked it all in. His words seemed to carry me to where he wanted me to be. He spoke on an emotional level—talking about our current living conditions and the things that needed to change. He also spoke on a spiritual level, telling us what freedom could and should look like in our daily lives. He told us that God himself had created the diversity of the universe and that his plan was for unity, not separateness. He said that people had rearranged God's order by segregating the races and that the Civil Rights movement was attempting to restore a rightful order to the universe based on biblical principles.

I never thought about Dr. King's credentials, such as his PhD from Boston University. He was just a good man of God trying to do the right thing. We had been taught to have great respect and reverence for all men of God. I firmly believe that every person of color bearing witness to those events felt that God had called Dr. King and each man at the front of that church to do what they were doing.

Dr. King made me think in ways I had never thought before. He taught that God's plan was for
all
people, not just certain groups of people. God wants us to love our neighbors as he loves us—all our neighbors, whatever their walks in life. Dr. King spoke of the love Paul describes in Romans 13:10—the love that “does no harm to its neighbor.” He spoke about the social injustices in our society and the way they mirrored those in the biblical books of Amos, Hosea, Micah, and others.

Even as a teenager, I was convinced that Dr. King was different from other preachers I had heard. Deliberate and purposeful, he addressed us with a calmness, a seriousness, and a serenity I had not heard before from the pulpit. He was grounded, and he knew where he was going. There was no anger or arrogance in his voice, only genuine humility. He was clearly a servant, but he was a leader, too, and something about him touched my heart.

Somehow I knew in my spirit that this was a man called of God and that God was ordering his steps. I could feel my soul stirring when he spoke. My spirit grew restless, and I knew I had to get involved. Something deep within me wouldn't let me say no.

After Dr. King's speech was over, Reverend Bevel talked about love and nonviolence. He explained that we were fighting for equality, that we should be able to go to state fairs and public libraries and zoos. Something in me resonated with that message. I had always wanted to go to Kiddieland, the city's popular amusement park, but I had never had the opportunity to go.

In the summertime, whenever my parents had driven our car by Kiddieland, I'd look above the tall fence that surrounded the park and see the top of the Ferris wheel going around, with the people—all of them white—strapped in the seats. I'd see the colorful tent top of the merry-go-round, where white children happily sat on horses and traveled in a huge musical circle.

I would lift my ears to the sounds of the festive melodies playing loudly in the background and the noises of crowds of white people having fun and cheering one another in contests. From my backseat car window, I would point my nose toward Kiddieland and breathe in the smells of roasting hot dogs, popcorn, cotton candy, and candied apples cooling on refreshment stand counters. But during my entire childhood, I had seen the amusement park only from the backseat window of our family car as we passed by its beckoning sights, sounds, and smells.

One day I had asked my parents why my brothers and sister and I couldn't go to Kiddieland. They hadn't explained that it allowed only white children and no black kids on its fairgrounds. “You just can't go,” my parents had said. When I pressed the issue, my mother had simply told me, “We don't have the money, Carolyn.”

I had accepted her answer.
We are poor
, I'd told myself.
That's why we can't go.

But sitting in the audience as Dr. King spoke that day, I acknowledged a truth that I had known for some time but had carefully avoided: it wasn't about money; it was about skin color.

Some fifteen years later—after I had grown up, gotten married, graduated from Fisk University, and had two daughters of my own—my family and I moved back to Birmingham to live. It was 1978, and that year Birmingham held its annual state fair at Kiddieland. I decided it was high time I made my first visit to the amusement park. My husband, Jerome, and I and our two young daughters drove to the fairgrounds, and I introduced my children to Kiddieland, which like the rest of Birmingham, was technically no longer segregated. I loved the carnival atmosphere that day—and especially eating cotton candy and candied apples. The girls saw cows and horses, and they seemed unusually fascinated by the chickens.

That night, after the girls got settled in their beds, I reflected back on all the times as a child I had yearned to go to Kiddieland but wasn't allowed to because I had black skin. And I felt both sad and happy—sad because I had missed that fun experience as a child but happy because my own daughters could now enjoy it—just as Dr. King had envisioned all those years before.

* * *

At that first meeting at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the strategy for the march was clearly laid out. First and foremost, Dr. King insisted that his listeners protest the unfair separateness with love and nonviolence. The agenda for the meeting went something like this:

Welcome/prayer

What we are trying to change

No violent resistance

Rules for marching and participation (no weapons)

Singing/closing

Dr. King spoke as if he were giving a sermon. “If you can't be nonviolent,” Dr. King explained, “then you need to find another way to offer your support. The integrity of this movement and march depends on your ability to be nonviolent.” He gave us these marching instructions: “If someone knocks you down, stay down. Don't resist the dogs. Just stay there. Don't run from them.”

At that moment I decided,
If Dr. King is planning a march, I want to march with him!

Dr. King described in detail what might happen to those of us who joined the march—possible police violence against us, maybe physical injuries, and even the chance of imprisonment. When he had fully explained the risks, he asked the congregation, “Who's willing to stand up for justice, to march for freedom, to take this on?”

The sanctuary grew quiet. Few adults in the church stood up. In those days, an open show of support for Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement could result in the loss of a job—and therefore loss of income for the family's food—or a Klan-planted bomb under a person's home, church, or business. Most of the adults, with good reason, were afraid to risk the little they had worked so hard to gain. They shuddered when they imagined the many ways the white power structure could punish them if they took a visible stand for equal rights. And they remained seated.

But one by one, the young people rose up from their seats and declared their bold commitment in spite of the risks. Schoolchildren, from first graders to high school seniors, stood up straight and tall in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church sanctuary and offered themselves as “living sacrifices”
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to the cause of freedom and fairness. And I, at fifteen years old, stood up with them.

That day we were swept up in the spirit of Dr. King's dream—the dream of an undivided Birmingham. If we had to endure pain and imprisonment, we believed it was worth it. In his speech at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in May 1957, Fred Shuttlesworth had said, “Some of us may have to die to accomplish this [equal rights].” At the time I had thought,
He's not talking about me or about my friends—or other young people. He's talking about the adults who are visibly active in the Civil Rights movement. Only adults die, not kids.
It wasn't until after September 15, 1963, that I finally understood that death could come to any one of us—adults and children alike. Martyrs come in all ages. Some white people in my city were so bent on maintaining segregation that no one was immune from their hate-filled actions.

The leaders gave us no definite date for the march on Birmingham.

“You'll know when it's time,” they told us.

From neighborhood to neighborhood and from school to school, black children and youth whispered the plans to one another, made their poster board signs, and waited with excited anticipation.

“Fred Shuttlesworth,” one of the ministers said, “you're going to get all of us killed!” But the Fred Shuttlesworth I had come to know and love was fearless. He had been beaten by mobs and thrown in jail, and his house had been bombed. Nothing fazed him.

The youth meetings continued in the church's sanctuary. Sometimes strangers came to the meetings—white infiltrators who wanted to know what we were planning. So we began to speak in a sort of code to keep our plans secret. We listened daily to Shelley Stewart, our favorite radio DJ. He called himself Shelley the Playboy, and speaking in code on the radio, he kept us abreast of the plans to march.

Dr. King warned us again and again of the dangers of marching. “You will encounter the police,” he said. “They may hit you or spit on you. They will have dogs and billy clubs.” He paused, then continued, “But no matter what the police do to you, the only appropriate response is no response—or a prayerful response.”

Dr. King passed around a huge trash can. “When it's time to march, you'll need to get rid of everything that could be perceived as a weapon—nail files, sharp pencils, everything. Get all that stuff off your body.”

After we emptied our pockets in preparation for the day of the march, someone a little older than I was came forward and we all sang:

Oh freedom!

Oh freedom!

Oh freedom over me.

And before I'll be a slave,

I'll be buried in my grave,

And go home to my Lord and be free.

Music and singing played a critical role in inspiring, mobilizing, and giving voice to the Civil Rights movement. Dr. King noted that “the freedom songs were playing a strong and vital role in our struggle. They gave the people new courage and a sense of unity.” King believed singing kept alive “a faith, a radiant hope, in the future, particularly in our most trying hours.”
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The songs stirred us and got us ready spiritually and emotionally. The lyrics also clearly laid out our strategy: “Ain't Gonna Let Nobody [Bull Connor] Turn Me Around” and “I'm gonna do what the Spirit says do. . . . If the Spirit says march, then march I will.” These words settled themselves deep within my spirit, and they live there to this day. When we sang those songs, we believed them, we internalized them, and we were ready to act on them.

We grew excited thinking about the march in downtown Birmingham. “When are we gonna march?” we asked again and again.

“You'll know when it's time,” the leaders said.

Many years later, Reverend Shuttlesworth explained to me that the night before the planned march, Dr. King became extremely worried about our safety—most of us were children. He had been criticized with such warnings as, “You're sending children to do the work of adults,” and these words haunted him. He decided to call off the march in order to protect us.

“They might get hurt,” Dr. King told the other leaders. “Then their parents would be upset and blame us.”

The ministers argued among themselves that night—the evening before the march that James Bevel had called D-day. Dr. King was the only one who wanted to cancel; the others wanted to go ahead with it. The young people were eager to finally march. They had been talking excitedly but secretly among themselves for weeks now, and they were ready. They wanted to face the police. They wanted to be arrested. They wanted freedom!

The ministers retired for the night without coming to a consensus. But Bevel had already started the wheels turning. By the time morning broke, there was no turning back.

* * *

That morning, May 2, 1963, I woke up and dressed for school as usual. I switched on my radio to WENN and heard DJ Shelley the Playboy announce, “All right, my students! I hope you've got your toothbrushes packed and you're ready!” (Toothbrushes, in code, meant we might spend that night in jail.) We knew what he meant.

Daddy made breakfast that morning as if it were another ordinary day, and after we ate together, the Maull children caught the school bus. But this was no ordinary day. I'd been listening diligently for the DJs code about when the march would take place, and the day had finally arrived. Mama and Daddy and my brothers and sister had no idea that I was going to be part of it. My heart was pounding.

At lunchtime, around eleven o'clock in the morning, students showed up outside the fence at Parker High School carrying big poster boards with large black letters that read, “It's time!”