https://ohms.libs.uga.edu%2Fviewer.php%3Fcachefile%3Dmedia%2Fwwlaw_0011.xml#segment0
TAPE: 11
[LOUD SPEAKING IN BACKGROUND]
[11]11:00:17
INTERVIEWER : The boycott starts four days after the (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
[11]11:00:20
W. W. LAW : That's right.
[11]11:00:22
INTERVIEWER : Talk about that.
[11]11:00:22
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) Yeah, well, well we knew what we had to do in order to
bring about change. We had to make our dollars help the cause, and we had to have the vote to help the cause. And there was no need to go out there and plead for rights and what have you, and not use these tools that were available to us.[11]11:00:46
INTERVIEWER : (UNINTELLIGIBLE) From that effort around employment, they realized
they needed to get involved in the political realm, and they became among the captains of voter registration drives.[11]11:00:58
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) Oh yes, okay.
[11]11:00:58
INTERVIEWER : (OVERLAPPING) (UNINTELLIGIBLE) kind of originated with this effort
to get people in at Bill Bomber, in at the Bill Bomber plant.[11]11:01:06
W. W. LAW :--and what have you. You see, he turned it around, and, uh, and I
just think, what would we have done if when Mr Harrison, who was (SOUNDS LIKE) park and tree, had not fought against opening up the squares and that type of thing. And that's our showplace now. But, uh, Savannah has always had a, what is it, uh, we wanted to be something that we wasn't. Yeah, we wanted to be either a Jacksonville or a new, or, or an Atlanta.[11]11:01:43
INTERVIEWER : (OVERLAPPING) Right.
[11]11:01:44
W. W. LAW : Or, or something. But we never were people who were willing to just
accentuate our own positives. And as a result, for 50 years, Charleston went on and did that thing.[11]11:01:58
INTERVIEWER : (OVERLAPPING) That's right.
[11]11:02:00
W. W. LAW : Yeah, 50 years.
[11]11:02:02
MALE : Well, I quote you all the time. I quote Mr Law all the time. What I do,
uh, say well, Black history (UNINTELLIGIBLE) is all about (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 'Cause my mother was a strong--[11]11:02:10
W. W. LAW :--they were driven out of Europe when the Tzar came into power. And
that gave him a certain sensitivity.[11]11:02:16
MALE : (OVERLAPPING) Right, right.
[11]11:02:16
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) That the would not have had otherwise. And they--
[11]11:02:19
INTERVIEWER : (OVERLAPPING) And where his father lived?
[11]11:02:21
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) And when they came here with nothing. Started with a
little store, and all of this is gone now, but they would have the grocery store in the front, and the saloon, oh, the saloon in the back. (LAUGH) And then they lived upstairs. They started way down at the foot of Bryant and Fong. Then came up to Maple and West Broad, yeah. (BACKGROUND NOISE) [11]11:02:49MALE : Often it is that people really never gave it serious thought. When I was,
I was at the University Of Georgia when the first Black students came to the University Of Georgia.[11]11:02:57
W. W. LAW : Is that right?
[11]11:02:57
MALE : And my roommate was a boy named Whit Knox. His father had
(UNINTELLIGIBLE) [11]11:03:02INTERVIEWER : (OVERLAPPING) (UNINTELLIGIBLE) [11]11:03:02
MALE : Whit had been, his father had been the campaign manager for Carl Sanders,
and these other great political leaders.[11]11:03:06
INTERVIEWER : (OVERLAPPING) (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the inner circle of the
(UNINTELLIGIBLE) [11]11:03:08MALE : (OVERLAPPING) So they decided to get Whit to be the man on campus to
(COUGH) (UNINTELLIGIBLE) going into the, uh, integrated mode. And I turned to Whit one day, and I said, Whit, what have Black people ever done to you that you would not want them to get an education?[11]11:03:22
MALE : And two days later he came back at me and said, I never really thought
about it. And that's, that's the real key right there.[11]11:03:27
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) That's right.
[11]11:03:27
MALE : (OVERLAPPING) He, it then passed on generation to generation. He never really.
[11]11:03:30
INTERVIEWER : (OVERLAPPING) (UNINTELLIGIBLE) It was a world he came into and he
(UNINTELLIGIBLE) [11]11:03:35MALE : (OVERLAPPING) That's right, you threw it up there, and you throw them out there.
[11]11:03:38
INTERVIEWER : You learned it young, that's interesting.
[11]11:03:41
MALE : (OVERLAPPING) Yeah, and I'll tell you, most of the people in this
community, uh, uh, I think, I don't know what the percentage, you could say, in fact, that most of them were raised by Black aunts, you know?[11]11:03:52
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) Oh yes.
[11]11:03:54
INTERVIEWER : (UNINTELLIGIBLE) [11]11:03:54
MALE : (OVERLAPPING) Prepare us with whatever they were doing.
[11]11:03:55
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) And, that's right.
[11]11:03:56
MALE : (OVERLAPPING) (UNINTELLIGIBLE) (LAUGH) [11]11:03:58
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) That's right. And those Blacks were devoted to those
young people as if they were their own children.[11]11:04:06
MALE : Yeah, Barry Washington that, uh, worked for, uh, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) He was
close to me after (UNINTELLIGIBLE) make sure you have a good funeral. I said, you're not gonna die poor.[11]11:04:16
W. W. LAW : Oh, right. (TECHNICAL) [11]11:04:37
W. W. LAW : He came up and two of the most (BACKGROUND NOISE) prominent families
in the White community.[11]11:04:42
MALE : Is that right?
[11]11:04:43
W. W. LAW : Yeah, he's a descendent of the Trains and the Sauces. Now I, I, I
say that with a, a degree of, you know, reservation, because I realize that the Sauces took Sam (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this way. (BACKGROUND NOISE) That's right.[11]11:05:05
MALE : But he was falling down when he was six months old.
[11]11:05:05
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) That's right.
[11]11:05:05
MALE : (OVERLAPPING) He was (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and falling.
[11]11:05:06
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) That's right. (TECHNICAL) [11]11:05:37
INTERVIEWER : Go to the early days of 1960, after the sit ins in Greensboro in
February. What is going on in Savannah in February, March, March 16.[11]11:05:51
W. W. LAW : Well we had organized youth council NAACP activity. And, uh, the
youth council was made up mainly of high school students and college students at Savannah State. And one of the mathematic teachers, a woman, was calling the students aside and saying, don't you follow the NAACP.[11]11:06:22
W. W. LAW : Dont you follow Law, and that type of thing. So they tried to, uh,
do what they could to prevent the young people from joining in the effort. But we had a group of young people in high school, in the west Savannah section. Of which, uh, the Shenholses (SP?) were all a part.[11]11:06:46
W. W. LAW : And they the Shenholses, the Wests, and, uh, the Coopers, they were
all a part. And the leader of the group was really a boy who came out of Moe Jackson's family. He was the leader of the group. And he called me and said, Mr Law, we want to demonstrate at the lunch counters.[11]11:07:13
W. W. LAW : We wonder if the NAACP would back us? I said, we'd back you, if you
(COUGH) submit to non-violence training. And, uh, if you will submit to non-violent training, and, uh, we will release you whenever we feel that you could stand the music. So they came in and, uh, who's there, Waves was my vice president.[11]11:07:45
W. W. LAW : And I signed him to training the young people on the third floor of
the West Broad YMCA. And he would meet each week, and they would go through roleplaying, and, uh, when he felt that, and, and, of course, I was right there. And likewise, I got a chance to kind of tell how well they were progressing.[11]11:08:12
W. W. LAW : And so, on March, early March, they had been training since late
February. Since the middle of February. And they began to pressure me. Mr Law, when are you going to release us to go to the lunch counters? I said, go. Saturday. And I had no idea that it was St Patrick's Day, when the greatest number of White folk were in the downtown area.[11]11:08:45
W. W. LAW : But those young folk were so set on doing it that they went among
those Irish mobs and went to those lunch counters, three to a, a counter. That's all. We never sent anybody that could be threatening. And my Lord, they went to the counters. Most of the people immediately realized they didn't want any trouble.[11]11:09:14
W. W. LAW : So they would, and we would go at 11:00, just before the noon hour.
And they would turn their, uh, steam tables off. But they would not agree to arrest anybody. But believe it or not, the manager of Levy Department Store was a deplaced, a displaced Russian Jew. And it did him no trouble to call the police, and to arrest the three people that we see on the poster there.[11]11:09:52
W. W. LAW : And so, that sparked the movement. Because we had three people in
jail. And then we came back two days later and some of the others began. When the store owner themselves would not call the police, the police would come in themselves and effect the arrest. But, uh, as a result that we called on the mass meeting on that Sunday.[11]11:10:21
W. W. LAW : And when we got through firing the people up, they threw in their
charge cards. And we had a young soldier who was at Hooter Field. I have not seen him since. He was there. And he went and got two large, uh, baskets and we gathered up all those charge cards.[11]11:10:45
W. W. LAW : And on Monday morning, he went to the Levy store and dumped them all
in the front door. That was the beginning of, we had our pickets ready. And that was the beginning of the movement.[11]11:10:57
INTERVIEWER : That meeting people (UNINTELLIGIBLE) ?
[11]11:10:59
W. W. LAW : Well, uh, we did it on that Sunday, the 20. And, and this young
soldier gathered them up in two hampers. Uh, all up in the hampers. And they carried them on Monday morning, just before the store opened, and dumped all of the charge cards there.[11]11:11:15
INTERVIEWER : What transpired at the meeting that led up to that point?
[11]11:11:27
W. W. LAW : Well, I was speaking.
[11]11:11:28
INTERVIEWER : And?
[11]11:11:29
W. W. LAW : And I told them, what you can do now is if they're going to arrest
our young people, mainly because they wanted to sit down at a lunch counter and have a Coke and a sandwich, you ought to be strong enough to stay out of that store, until you can be treated like others are treated who spend their money in the store.[11]11:11:48
W. W. LAW : And we, we charged, and, and then I, I said, there ought to be a
boycott. And so they began to say where are the charge cards? And then they just started throwing it to me, yes.[11]11:12:02
INTERVIEWER : They threw them up to you at the front?
[11]11:12:04
W. W. LAW : Oh yes, I was on the platform.
[11]11:12:07
INTERVIEWER : And all of a sudden, what happened?
[11]11:12:10
W. W. LAW : We gathered them up, I said--
[11]11:12:11
INTERVIEWER : (OVERLAPPING) Try to describe the scene to me.
[11]11:12:17
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) Right down, yes, they came in. Hundreds of charge
cards. They, uh, agreed to give them up right then. (CLEARS THROAT) Then they began to affect the boycott. They were coming on to Easter, and we began to preach to people to wear old clothes. And what most folk don't know, I have not bought a suit of clothes since 1960 until now.[11]11:12:48
W. W. LAW : The women would go to second hand racks and would try to keep me
looking halfway decent during the movement. (INTERVIEWER LAUGHS) But I never went back into a store to buy a suit of clothes.[11]11:13:00
INTERVIEWER : Stemming from March 20, 1960?
[11]11:13:01
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) Oh yes. I live by example, sure.
[11]11:13:05
INTERVIEWER : Talk about organizing a boycott, what you have to overcome, and
how you keep it going.[11]11:13:13
W. W. LAW : As I said before, I had a woman's movement led by Mercedes White.
Esther Garrison. These people were willing to work, work, and then there was (COUGH) a great number of other work. You'd be surprised. Lester Hayes' mother was already a grandmother, but she gave (UNINTELLIGIBLE) service.[11]11:13:44
W. W. LAW : She took care of all that east side for us. But we had women who
were willing to get out and pound the bricks. Uh, we had no other way. And then we realized that there were people who were confined to their homes, and they were not coming to our meetings. So, I brought all, many of the letter carriers who worked with me.[11]11:14:12
W. W. LAW : And I would give them the telephone book. And I would have them mark
all of the Black telephone holders that they knew. And I took the book, and I marked all the Black holders that I knew. And we finally published a Black telephone book, when we had a, a verifying woman who had, was born across the river in Switzerland.[11]11:14:40
W. W. LAW : Just this side of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) But had gone north, and spent a
few years at Spellman College, and had gone north and had returned home to take care of a sister who was the wife of Marion, Deacon Marion Washington. So, she was confined to the house with the, the sick sister.[11]11:15:04
W. W. LAW : And our women came up upon an idea of having her orchestrate, or
direct, or coordinate from her sister's house, uh, the telephone. And we recruited 100 housewives. And each week, Miss Mack would give each of these people an assignment on which pages that they were to make their calls.[11]11:15:35
W. W. LAW : And oftentimes, the calls were, we're still boycotting, and you're
not to shop downtown. Or, Tuesday is election, and we want you to be sure to come to the polls. We had minute control over everybody, just about, in the community. It, it worked us down. That's where I got baldheaded. (INTERVIEWER LAUGHS) [11]11:15:57W. W. LAW : 'Cause, uh, it was tight, and my nervous system came, everything and
everything. But, uh, I, that's where I began to lose the hair on top of my head. But it was tight. And, uh, at no time could I allow the White folk know that I wasn't accessible to my people. And if I went to a national board meeting on a Monday, I would leave my number with Ms Garrison. And she would be able to call me and let me know what's happening, and whether I need to turn around and return to the city. Yeah.[11]11:16:37
INTERVIEWER : Any crises along the way?
[11]11:16:40
W. W. LAW : Uh, everyday was a crisis, son. Because we were dead set, and this
is what a lot of folk don't appreciate about me. I was autocratic, because I knew that if we failed, it wasn't going to be possible to do anything for another generation. There were people out there who were saying, I knew they couldn't pull it off.[11]11:17:15
W. W. LAW : I knew they couldn't get it going. And I knew they shouldn't have
bothered them White folk. So, we had to hold it close, and to make certain that every move was a part of the conquering army. As a boy, I had already, and the boarder at our house, Mr Abraham Barnett, Civil War.[11]11:17:40
W. W. LAW : So I learned how the generals organized their armies and operated.
And I, to some extent, I, the young people say that when I got ready to let them go to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) They say that, uh, everything was military precision. And it was like the lining, uh, joining up in the Army. But we, we weren't playing.[11]11:18:05
W. W. LAW : Because we had to succeed. There were a whole lot of people standing
on the sidelines who were saying that they're gonna fail. But the greatest thing happened. We had a store down the street. (LAUGH) (COUGH) Yackem And Yackem (SP?). Who sold very cheap goods.[11]11:18:30
W. W. LAW : And when the street boys found out what I was trying to do, two
women slipped into Yackem's (COUGH) and came out of the store with their packages. And those ruffians grabbed those packages and tore them up right in front of their face. And they went back into the Black community and said, be careful. They'll take your bags and tear them up. And so they did us a lot of good. (LAUGH) (COUGH) [11]11:18:58INTERVIEWER : Though you had to publicly disapprove of that.
[11]11:19:01
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) Oh yes, oh yes. But I didn't do it too strongly.
(LAUGH) [11]11:19:08INTERVIEWER : What were some of your other strategies and tactics?
[11]11:19:14
W. W. LAW : Well, this is mainly, we were mainly, it was (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
Conducting voter registration. And wheeling the Black community into a, a block vote. Because throughout the south, wherever Blacks had succeeded, they had some political clout. If you couldn't get some protection from the sheriff.[11]11:19:46
W. W. LAW : And, uh, some protection from somebody in City Hall, you were
(SOUNDS LIKE) high born and, and weeds. And so, the first thing we did was to try to replace some of the people who were in office. And the first person was Mingledorf. It, it worked right into our hands.[11]11:20:07
W. W. LAW : He had done everything he could (COUGH) to break the boycott while
he was mayor. He wanted to break the boycott. He got tired of being mayor and decided he was going to run for the county commission. Which was really the powerful position in the town at that time.[11]11:20:35
W. W. LAW : Judge Solomon, Judge, uh, General May. Uh, Judge Houlihan. They were
the power. Uh, all them were, uh, a part of the cohorts of Johnny Bolling.[11]11:20:46
INTERVIEWER : Right.
[11]11:20:48
W. W. LAW : The Irish political Catholic (UNINTELLIGIBLE) And then when that
happened, but they had to have a Jew there, because they voted to. And so it was a balanced ticket, yeah. But we, that was mainly, now, we did many other things. Because we had to, we were constantly going before the board of education. From the forties on, petitioning and asking them to, uh, desegregate the schools. Uh.[11]11:21:24
INTERVIEWER : Talk about the end of the boycott story.
[11]11:21:35
W. W. LAW : Well, we closed down many stores. We closed down, Broad Street
almost came to be a dead street. Because the White folk came in when we started boycotting, for two or three Saturdays, and they just went into stores and shopped. But they didn't continue. And so after a short while, we were in control of the street again. And we held on to what we had.[11]11:22:09
INTERVIEWER : How does it conclude?
[11]11:22:11
W. W. LAW : Well, finally, we had done so much havoc with the downtown, that
when the second mayor came in, he was a fairly decent main. That was Malcolm McClain. And Malcolm McClain was chancellor of the, the Episcopal diocese of Georgia. And as a result, he knew the bishop real well.[11]11:22:38
W. W. LAW : And he asked the bishop to mediate race, because he had to go
outside of the chamber, the same chamber wouldn't do anything. They were afraid that they would be criticized by their peers, and all that type of thing. So, they wouldn't do anything for us. So that Malcolm McClain called the bishop.[11]11:23:03
W. W. LAW : And Bishop Stewart was courageous enough that he, most of the
permanent people with money and influence were Episcopals at that time, they weren't Baptist. They were the riff, the White riff raff, by and large, too few prominent people. But the great portion of this community's leadership was in the church, uh, the Episcopal church.[11]11:23:31
W. W. LAW : And he asked the bishop to create a committee of 100 that would
begin to try to establish dialogue with the Black leadership. We had refused to meet with Mingledorf, because he wanted to dictate the terms, and wanted to say what Blacks could be at the meeting, and all that type of thing.[11]11:23:53
W. W. LAW : And we weren't going to take any dictations from him. So, we went on
until McClain came in, and then he created, with the bishop committee, a committee of 100. And then that committee of 100 decided to select five people who would represent all of them. One of them was (COUGH) Malcolm Bell, Jr.[11]11:24:27
W. W. LAW : Old line Savannah family, whose family had been in journalism. And
he was now the chairman of the board of the old bank in the town. The Savannah Bank And Trust . Then there was another old Savannahian, who was extremely aggressive and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) He had been figuring into politics for quite some time.[11]11:24:54
W. W. LAW : He was A Pratt Adams, Jr. And Pratt Adams had as his clients the C &
S Bank, the Wise Theater, and several of the other big money people in the community. Then there was the big department store, Jewish department store, Sam Adler Jr. So, Mr Adler was a part of the five.[11]11:25:23
W. W. LAW : And, uh, I don't know, so, but those were really the leaders. But,
uh, but they began, now, I am told by, I am told by the committee, since really, I was on the Black side of the community and had very little contact with White people at that time. But I'm told, I am told that there was a move underway to start dialogue.[11]11:26:10
W. W. LAW : And the only person was the Catholic bishop, who was not beholden to
the parishioners. So, they went to the Catholic archbishop, and had him name Monseigneur John Toomey, who devoted everyday, going back and forth to the community, uh, Black and White community, until he could get them to agree to sit down and negotiate, uh, the desegregation of the public and private accommodations.[11]11:26:42
INTERVIEWER : So they meet with you.
[11]11:26:44
W. W. LAW : Oh yes.
[11]11:26:45
INTERVIEWER : What were you waiting for?
[11]11:26:51
W. W. LAW : (OVERLAPPING) We, we then said, we had already set before them in
1960 a group of demands that we were insisting on for desegregation. So, there was now three years that transpired. And we then set up another set of demands, and we presented it to Monseigneur Toomey and the representatives of the committee of 100.[END OF TAPE: [11]11:27:30]
