Washington College Magazine
Gloria Richardson led residents of Cambridge, MD, in an effort to abolish the entrenched segregation and address the glaring socio-economic inequity of their hometown in the mid-1960s.
Gloria Richardson, now 85, urged students to speak out against injustice.
Former Indiana Senator Birch Bayh worked tirelessly to draft and pass equal rights legislation and remains one of the most influential Senators in our nation's history. At Convocation, Bayh said equality for all citizens is still elusive.
Birch Bayh was a military policeman in the occupation army in Germany, 1947.
Bayh shared his democratic ideals at a rally at Indiana University, c. 1970s.
Historian and author Taylor Branch labored for 25 years to chronicle the civil rights movement through the accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On The Path To Freedom
By Jasper Colt '09
At Washington's Birthday Convocation, the College honored three individuals who have made history in the realm of civil rights. In leading the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee to address segregation as well as issues such as inadequate housing, health care and wages, Gloria Richardson drew the eyes of the nation to Maryland's Eastern Shore. With his monumental trilogy America in the King Years: 1954-1968, Pulitzer-Prize winning author Taylor Branch has written one of the most important works of American history. And Senator Bayh has devoted his career to championing the rights of all Americans—especially those who had been pushed to the margins. Before the ceremony, Gloria Richardson, Taylor Branch and Senator Birch Bayh sat down with students to reflect on this important chapter in American history.
Gloria Richardson
Q: How did you get your start in the movement?
Richardson:. Cambridge was totally segregated. I think all along people may have resented it, but it wasn't evident in their day-to-day lives. When Donna [Richardson's daughter] was in high school, the Freedom Riders came to town, and they ended up at my uncle's. They wanted some local guides for some weekend demonstrations, and Donna and her group of friends became that. Eventually, they were trained by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC] to run a campaign against segregated public accommodations in Cambridge.
Q: As a leader in your community, where did you find inspiration for the decisions you had to make?
Richardson: I guess from the people that were involved. Once we started, more and more people of all ages became involved in different roles. For the first part, the students ran the protests. We had a twelve- or fifteen-member committee [CNAC, Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee], and we met at least once a week. We also could meet if something horrible started up. So, there was always feedback on what was done, and we weren't always right. But, because there was this model of group leadership, there was always a "Plan B" if "Plan A" didn't work. Most of those people were leaders in their neighborhoods, so it was almost like they had constituencies and knew what [their constituents] were doing and talking about. That was one of the good things about SNCC—it came from a local perspective.
Q: When the proposed equal rights bill came to a referendum in Cambridge, how did you and others decide that black voters should abstain from voting?
Richardson: We were born here and had rights, like anybody else, so why were we going to vote on something that should be an absolute right of citizens in this country? Referendums were not working in this country. I think California had a referendum on housing and they lost. Their opponents were wealthier; they could put ads out that weren't true. Poor and black folks lost all the time in those referendums. So, on one level it was that too, but why vote on something that belongs to you anyhow?
Q: When was the point that you decided that nonviolence was a good idea but that you had to protect yourselves?
Richardson: I always thought that nonviolence was only a tactic, and I think that was true of a lot of people at that time. For example, Cambridge sent a case of red pepper spray down to SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] and they sent back that they were too nonviolent to use it. We were putting it around the cuffs [of our pants/skirts] for the dogs, and people really thought that we had some kind of voodoo working because, of course, as soon as these snarling police dogs got red pepper on their noses they would just start backing away. I think Gandhi said that once you retreat into your home you have a right not to be threatened. So, you can't go back home and have people firebombing and shooting in your neighborhood without protecting yourself in some way. [The protests] weren't riots, really.
Birch E. Bayh, Jr.
Q: You began your political career in the Indiana House of Representatives. What were you able to do there that pushed you to continue your career?
Bayh: My late wife and I decided we wanted to make a difference with our lives, so we went door-to-door campaigning against three incumbents, and led the ticket because nobody had ever bothered to ask the precinct committee people for their vote.
We increased minimum teacher salaries by fifty percent. We plowed more money back into the retirement program for teachers. We plowed tens of millions of dollars back into our university system. And, most significantly, we passed a school reorganization bill.
Q: You played a role in the Equal Rights Amendment, which ultimately failed to be ratified by enough states, but which led to your introduction of Title IX. Is there still a need for the ERA today?
Bayh: The Business and Professional Women had asked me to support a constitutional amendment, which I ended up introducing in the Senate. Most of the egregious laws [discriminating against women] were state laws, and slowly but surely the legislatures began to change them. At this point, most have been changed. But even given that, we still need a constitutional amendment. This Supreme Court has shown that it is not favorably inclined to move in a direction for equality..it could rewrite history in a hurry.
We wanted to let the black community at Jackson State, and minority citizens all over the country, know that some of us who were of a little different color were not going to sit still and let this kind of thing happen.
Q: You were sent to Jackson State to investigate the shootings that occurred there. What came out of that investigation?
Bayh: We held some hearings down there, but nothing ever came of that commission. We wanted to let the black community at Jackson State, and minority citizens all over the country, know that some of us who were of a little different color were not going to sit still and let this kind of thing happen. President Nixon missed a great opportunity to reach out to the black community and say, "We're going to do better. We're not going to tolerate violence against black students or anyone else for that matter." But instead he played politics with race, resulting in great backsliding in this country so far as civility among the races is concerned.
Q: You received a lot of support from college students on campuses around the country. Did you support their efforts at nonviolent protest?Bayh: One of the most emotional speeches I think I ever gave was in an auditorium packed with students. [As a nation] we were asking young Americans to give their lives in Vietnam, but I was powerfully struck by the fact that young people who knew they were fortunate not to be going over there were doing what they could in their own way, exercising their citizen right to make the government work. I was so proud of them. I toured all of our four state university campuses and I addressed students on this very subject.
Taylor Branch
Q: In your research, you listened to and transcribed many hours of President Lyndon Johnson's personal phone conversations with Dr. King and others. Did you hear anything that surprised you?
Branch: His agony over Vietnam was a chastising lesson for me because I belonged to the generation that demonized Johnson. We thought he loved Vietnam; we thought he was driven by some anger and fury. He knew the war was a disaster. He knew it wouldn't work. He said, "The American people will reject any President that doesn't fight this war. I'll be out and I won't be able to do anything else. Fighting this war is the price of doing this other stuff [civil rights legislation]." Dr. King summarized it a couple of times, saying, "I don't think he's a warmonger, but I think he's scared not to be violent." In other words, he's scared to say that the answer to freedom in Vietnam is not going to be determined by violence.
Dr. King would say that you have to start with the notion that democracy is built on nonviolence because democracy is a cathedral of votes, that's all it is.Q: I would love to know why Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was your subject choice. Was there a different angle you wanted to portray about him, or something you wanted to bring to light for the reader?
Branch: I grew up in Atlanta in the civil rights era. I was a teenager when the sit-ins started. So these were my formative years. The civil rights movement, all through my childhood, was pounding into me very fundamental issues. Finally I was transfixed by the demonstrations with the dogs and fire hoses in the spring of '63 [Birmingham, AL] when I was a junior in high school. [I asked myself], "Why is it that these eight-year-old kids, mostly girls, are doing this, singing songs that I sing in Sunday school, and how could this be happening?" I never got an answer to that and it got me interested in politics. I read ferociously to try and find out where it came from. I really wrote the books to answer the questions that I couldn't answer as a kid.
Q: Martin Luther King, Jr. made a poignant connection between democracy and nonviolence. Does this connection still have meaning today?
Branch: There's a tremendous connection and, in my view, it's neglected. To me, democracy is a vast and very profound subject that is neglected. We don't think about it very much. I see it as a practical challenge, but also a theoretical challenge that ought to be studied at every university. The people, when they think about democracy, ought to think of it as a very daring and complicated proposition that hasn't been worked out yet. Dr. King would say that you have to start with the notion that democracy is built on nonviolence because democracy is a cathedral of votes, that's all it is. A vote is nothing but a piece of nonviolence to substitute for the old way of doing business, which was trial by fire or sword or conquest. Yet, whenever democracy is tested, like 9/11 or Iraq, we say, "If we really want to have democracy, send in the army." Okay, well that is a rich, pregnant contradiction. If there's anything that you could say about the 1960s, it showed that nonviolence is enormously powerful because it set in motion all these democratizing forces that refined American freedom for women, for minorities. In one way we really believe that our strength is in our values, but we also have this inherited notion that our strength is in our military.
Q: Does King's legacy live on today, or have we forgotten the lessons of the civil rights movement?
Branch: As I've said, I think nonviolence, which was what he recommended most consistently, applies not just to race, but also to war and to poverty and lots of other things. He said, "This is at the heart of democracy, and this is how you make progress. Wrestle with these questions." We're not doing that because nonviolence is passé, among his followers and certainly among his opponents. I think it's fair to say that the legacy of King has been more vibrant outside the United States than inside. I think that everyone, at one level, knows that we got something valuable from it, but I don't think that it's a real engagement, the way we would do it if we thought that it was about the future, not just the past. It's so deeply connected to our principles that are at stake in the world, and our democracy, which does rest on nonviolence. Every citizen's appreciation of these principles is important going forward, whether we're going into Iraq or trying to deal with global warming or any of these things. If they are a test of democracy, then King is pertinent. We don't behave like that, and I will say that that is not just our loss; I think it is our danger not to.
History major Jasper Colt '09, the Starr Center's Michael Buckley and Katie Blaha '09 of The Elm contributed questions to the sessions from which this article is drawn.
300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, Maryland 21620 | 410-778-2800 | 800-422-1782