The Education of a Black Radical: A Southern Civil Rights Activist's Journey, 1959-1964

10. An Offensive Christmas

~ 10 ~ An Offensive Christmas Thefirstruleofeducation,inalllands,isneversayanythingoffensivetoanyone. —voltaire (in the Southern University Digest, october 1961) T he next morning, Dr. Clark closed school four days early for the Christmas holidays. And the Baton Rouge State Times ran a long article under the headline “Board of Education Issues Warning to Negro Students, Courts Ban Demonstrations.” The board’s statement declared that any student arrested or jailed would automatically be suspended and forbade students living on campus to take part in demonstrations not sanctioned by the institution. “Those who live off the campus and take part in demonstrations not sanctioned by the institution shall not be allowed to return to the campus,” the resolution stated. Lewis Doherty, a member of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, asked the State Board to screen out-of-state applicants to state-supported institutions. He asked school authorities “to exercise more prudence in the invitation of guest speakers.” And he asked that any individual who is connected with a tax-supported educational institution and who is found guilty of violating any state and local laws should be permanently expelled. The article also included a description of how police were forced to use tear gas to “quell 1,500 Negroes” and a restatement of District Court Judge Gordon West’s restraining order against any CORE-led or CORE-sponsored activity. None of this surprised us very much. We had no reason to assume or even hope the board of education would act any differently than they had in an offensive christmas 95 1960. We knew CORE was wearing on the local bureaucrats’ nerves, and we expected to have to do some battling in court. The only thing we needed in order to pull off protests against the board and the courts, the local businessmen and bureaucrats was Dr. Clark’s support. All we needed was Southern to stand behind us in opposition to the expulsion orders. With that, we felt sure we could win. When Dr. Clark announced the early closing of the school, we weren’t sure how to react. Maybe he was biding time—getting us off campus and out of town in order to get the board off his back, so he could think this thing out. Clark was astute enough to recognize that while his announcement of support had brought a certain amount of bewildered satisfaction to the minds of his students, it had not eased the tension that overwhelmed the campus. Tension was what he wanted, understandably, to avoid. But none of us could be sure what Clark would do when push came to shove. We had no positive precedent to point to. Moreover, it remained to be seen whether he had actually learned a lesson from the events of 1960. An uncertain nervousness hung over the ten of us who were the remnants of the Baton Rouge CORE and Southern leadership—now called the Student Freedom Committee—and who gathered at Pat Tate’s small two-bedroom apartment in Scotlandville. It was the nervousness that comes from knowing there is something you should be doing, but you can’t remember what it is. It was like constantly looking over your shoulder only to find no one there. Although we tried to support each other and give each other hope, tempers sometimes flared—understandably in these circumstances. We knew that, instead of heading for our various hometowns, we had to stay near the campus to maintain a visible presence and keep our momentum alive. It was hard: there were ten of us camping out in a small apartment, sleeping on the floor or upright in chairs, fixing meals in a cramped kitchen. We handed out fliers, worked on money-raising schemes, kept in contact with the national CORE office in New York, visited the jailed students, and met with lawyers to plan for the first round of hearings. The liberal leader Allard Lowenstein—who was then at Stanford University and whom I had met at the National Student Association convention— stopped off to visit and offer us encouragement. He was on his way to New Orleans to visit his fiancée, Cokie Boggs, daughter of the Louisiana political leader Hale Boggs. Our goals during this wintry and turbulent period were threefold: to achieve desegregation of public facilities, to pressure the South- 96 the education of a black radical ern administration to work with us, and to arrange the release...