The Borning Struggle: An Interview with Bernice Johnson Reagon
Reading: Interview of Bernice Johnson Reagon by Dick Cluster
Through the story of the growth of the Civil Rights Movement in one town—Albany, Georgia—students get an insider’s perspective on how and why people got involved in the Movement, the collaboration and tension between groups, and the impact the Movement had on the town and its people. The interview also highlights the integral role of music as a unifying and strengthening force. As a native of Albany, an historian, a lifelong activist, and renowned songwriter and vocalist, Bernice Johnson Reagon is the ideal person to tell this story.
How did you first get involved in the Movement?
In Albany, Georgia, there’s a district called Harlem. It’s about three blocks long, and it’s a Black district Harlem’s Black wherever it is. There was a drugstore in Harlem. It was owned by whites and they wouldn’t hire Blacks. Not anybody to sweep nothing. So we formed, in the summer of 1960, a junior chapter of the NAACP; I was the secretary. We’d go to the drug store in Harlem, to talk to the owners and try to get them to hire a Black person. And they’d run us out, and then we’d go and meet and talk about what to do next.
What I’d known before then about struggle and the Civil Rights Movement centered around Autherine Lucy [the first Black student to enroll in the University of Alabama in 1956 only to be subsequently expelled], who affected me deeply. I think I was in junior high school, so I was 11 or 12, pulling for this woman to get into this university. She had been admitted, she was suspended, she was readmitted, and then they kicked her out again. I thought we were just beginning to fight...and then she got married to this preacher. I was real upset, because for me it felt like when she got married she got tired, like she had been so battered on and this preacher was marrying her and taking her away so she wouldn’t fight any more. I did not want her to be tired, and I didn’t want her to be taken away, and I didn’t want her to rest. I wanted her to go back.
Also I remember when the 1954 Supreme Court decision came, my father saying, “Now that’s the supreme law of the land!” Like, the Supreme Court, that’s it. I remember him reading from it in the house, and it being a really high time.
When I entered Albany State College the segregated state-run Black school in Albany we were already watching the other colleges. It was the fall of 1960, and the sit-ins had begun. Students involved in civil rights demonstrations were calling all the Black colleges in the South and asking the student governmentsAt the same time, on the campus there were several things happening. One was that white men would go to the girls’ dormitories to solicit women, and a few times women would find these men on the second or third floor. They would call the football team who would run down, catch the men, and hold them until the campus security guards showed up. On two occasions in that particular year, the guard held the gun on the Black male students and let the white ones get away. Also teenage white guys would drive on the campus and throw eggs on you as you walked. At the same time, we found rats in the tubs and in the dining hall food. We combined all of these issues and had a rally. The response was that student government activities were suspended. And at the end of the year Irene Asbury, a dean who had supported the students, was fired.
Fall 1961 was when the Albany movement got underway. There was one particular incident that clarified for me who and where I was in this society. I was a freshman dorm counselor at the college. I picked up the phone one day and this white guy said, “Do you want 20 dollars?” I said, “Yes” I thought it was a radio show. So he said, “There’s 20 dollars on the seat of my car.” And I thought, “Car?... Radio?...” until finally I figured out that he was soliciting, and, since I was a student dorm counselor, I was supposed to catch him! (Too much TV.)
I made a date with this man, went to my faculty advisor my music teacher and he said, “My God, child.” He went to the president who was reluctant to deal with it. Then he went to the Albany, Georgia police. Though I’d made the appointment off campus, the police said they couldn’t deal with it because it was a campus issue. The police told the campus security guards not to use weapons in dealing with the case. I was not informed of this. My advisor just said, “It’s going to be okay; you go ahead and we’re going to have the police there.” So I’m on this corner, waiting. I was saving the world, and saving all these freshmen. And here comes this man in this Volkswagen and he says, “Get in the car.”
I didn’t see the police, and I wouldn’t get in. I said, “Where’s the 20 dollars?” He said he had to go cash a check. I thought it was really good that I asked for the 20 dollars since he didn’t have it. He told me, “I can’t give you no money,” so I told him, “Well, forget it then.” I still didn’t see no police, so I decided I’d better start walking back to the campus. He was driving alongside trying to talk me into the car.
Finally, along comes Mr. Chadwell’s (my music teacher’s) car. That’s all. No police, no sirens. I couldn’t believe it. I had this crook right here; I thought everybody should come and catch him. I mean, that’s the way it happens on TV. That’s the way the American system works. I felt like I was plugging right into the American system. The security police[man] jumped out of Mr. Chadwell’s car, put his hand on the white man’s car, and said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The guy drove off.
I went down the next morning to the police station, and the police said, “We’re glad you brought this to our attention because we want to stop this, but his wife says he wasn’t home. He was out of town.”
Two weeks later, I was involved in demonstrations. I was down at the police station, and the major part was getting on your knees and praying. I’m on my knees, picketing the station and praying. There was Chief Pritchett in front of me, asking, “Weren’t you in my office, uh, just the other day?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Well didn’t we try to help you?” And I said, “No you didn’t catch him!”
That was my awareness, graphic awareness, of what side I was on. I’d always been afraid of police, knew you weren’t supposed to run into them, but on some level I must have thought that you really could call on that system and it would [be] me on one side, and a lot of other people, that I really didn’t know a lot about, on the other side.