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Transcript of "Voices from the Mississippi Hill Country: The Benton County Civil Rights Movement"
Engy Lamour: Good afternoon everyone. My name is Engy Lamour. I'd like to welcome you all to today's program, Voices from the Mississippi Hill Country. I want to take a moment and tell you a little bit about the Alumni of Color Network at Brandeis, and given that I'm an alumni of color, went Brandeis Class of 2007, I think it's apropos. The Alumni of Color Network is a shared interest group, it's self-selecting, opt-in community intended to serve as an affinity space for individuals who were historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups, as well as their allies. Given the legacy of exclusion through policies and practices based on race, and ethnicity in our society, the AOC network, not to be confused with Alexandria, aims to address the needs of an established community among Brandeis graduates of color and their alumni allies. By providing opportunities for our alumni connections and mentorship to current students, the AOC network supports the goals of a university and a collective effort to move towards a more equitable and just society. Before we get started, let's go through a few housekeeping items, you knew what's coming. To ensure that we can hear the speakers clearly, everyone will be muted for this call. If you do have a question for the speakers, please use the chat feature to ensure we answer them. We'll do our best to get as many questions as possible. Without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to Alan Bertman from the Office of Institutional Advancement to introduce our alumni speakers.
Alan Bertman: Thank you, Engy. I have the honor and pleasure of introducing Aviva Futorian and Roy DeBerry, two distinguished Brandeis graduates who have a 50 plus years friendship. Aviva is a lawyer in Chicago currently working on prison reform issues with a focus on long-term prisoners. She grew up in Chicago and received her bachelors in history from Brandeis Class of 1959, and taught high school in Pack Forest Illinois, three years before coming to Mississippi as part of freedom summer. After working as a freedom school teacher in the summer of 1964, she became an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Benton County for two years. After leaving Mississippi, she went to law school and received her JD from the University of Chicago, worked as a legislative assistant for Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman and became Director of the Women's Law Project of the Chicago Legal Services Program and represented death sentence defendants in Illinois in their final appeals. Aviva first met Roy DeBerry, when he was her freedom school student in 1964. They worked together in Benton County in the 60s. Both maintained close contact with Benton County residents during the intervening years. Roy DeBerry, is a native of Holly Springs, Mississippi, is the executive director and one of the founders of the Hill Country Project. He was active as a high school student in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. First as a freedom school prep students, and then as general organizer. Roy earned his Bachelor's degree in sociology at Brandeis University In 1970, continuing his education at Brandeis. He went on to earn a Masters and later a doctorate in political science in 1978. He also taught at Rust college, was academic dean at Mississippi Industrial College, both in Holly Springs and Jackson State. He's certified to teach at the high school level and has extensive administrative management experience. He retired in 2008 as Vice-President for economic development and local government affairs at Jackson State University. Finally, Roy is active in many community, civic and professional organizations. He has received numerous awards and has been cited for outstanding achievements in contributions including an Alumni Achievement Awards from Brandeis, in 2015. I'm looking forward to hearing more about their research and their book about life before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement that's told in first-person stories, by the residents of Benton County in the North Hill country of Mississippi. We're going to start with a brief video clip of Miss Emmerline Robinson. This clip was done by John Lyons, one of the editors, and shown at the first scholarship banquet in Benton County. Thanks.
Aviva Futorian: Well, I hope you enjoyed that little film. There's so much to tell you about each person in the film. Unfortunately we don't have time. My name is Aviva Futorian. I spent about two years in Mississippi from '64 to '66. I came there as what was called a Freedom School teacher and at the end of the summer was asked by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC to stay as an organizer in Benton County. Somebody commented that I was the first white girl chosen to head up the organization of accounting. If that's true, the reason was the county itself was already very well organized. I really played the role of a golfer. The reason this county with organize, well, let me tell you a little about the county itself. It's on the border of Tennessee, in the center of the state, north center. It has a population of 8,000 with a negative growth rate. Today it's 61 percent white, 36 percent black, with an average income today of $32,000. Thirty one percent of the blacks and 16 percent of the whites live below the poverty line. That's today. In '65, it was the second poorest county in Mississippi, which as you know, is a very poor state. Today, is the 17th poorest county in the state. Poor as it was, it had one of the most active civil rights groups in the state. One reason was because many of the blacks owned their own land. Little tiny pieces of land. You wouldn't call them landowners as much as you call them poor farmers. But they were independent, they weren't dependent white people. The second reason was because of a man by the name of Henry Reaves. You might have noticed in the picture who was conducting some of these meetings. Henry Reaves, we didn't know this at the time, we learned that 30 years later when we went back and interviewed people, he visited every single black resident of Benton County when he or she turned 21, which was then the voting age, and gave them a lecture on the importance of registering to vote. Almost everyone we interviewed told about Mr. Reaves visiting them and telling them to try to register and vote. Those of you who saw the movie Selma may remember how Oprah Winfrey, who played the part of the woman who tried to register but failed because she couldn't state the names of 67 circuit clerks in her county. When she failed, I think she did a brilliant job of portraying how terribly embarrassed and humiliated she was as if there was something wrong with her. Well, that's how black people all over Mississippi felt. Not only did they fail and they felt like failures, but there are names would be printed in the local i e white newspapers for two or three weeks after they tried to register. One of the things the movement did was to make people realize that failing registration was not something to feel humiliated about, but was really a badge of honor. One of the women there by the name of Bernie Alexander, who was a poet and she had a lot of her poetry and the Benton County freedom train, which you heard about, she set the record of triangle register 13 times. Her name was in the white paper constantly or she and her husband owned their own land so it didn't threaten her. While her name was in the white paper, while her poetry was in the black paper. In fact, Benton County had the highest registration failure rate after the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. It became one of the first counties in the state to get a federal registrar. Mrs Alexander finally registered successfully along with several 100 others. The first thing they did was vote the local judge out of office. Though he had written them all letters asking them that bygones should be bygones and he was really their friend. I'll just tell you a little about meeting Roy. When I was teaching the Freedom School the very first day he was there, he was a 16-year-old kid, and he knew the answers to all the questions that sneak people had told us to raise, who is the richest black person, why weren't they active in the movement, and so forth. Not only was he rich, was he knowledgeable, but he was also a very nice kid. I also taught at that time a college prep class out in Benton County and Roy, who actually lived in Holly Springs, we all lived in Holly Springs Benton County was an adjoining county. He would drive out there with me and take the class. By the way, I think there were seven kids in the class. All of them went on to college. Unfortunately, all of them, which is the story of Mississippi, except for Roy all of them left Mississippi for good once they graduated high school and that's what's making Mississippi really poor. What I didn't know was on the way to our class Roy would stop off at Mr. Reaves' house, I thought to drop something off, but it was actually to pick up a shot gun in case we encountered trouble along the way. Of course, he never told me about that and fortunately, we didn't encounter. After my stay in Mississippi, I went on to law school, figuring I could maybe be a catalyst if I couldn't be an organizer and Roy went on to college and grad school. By the way, he went, I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember Phil, I hope I'm getting his name right, Phil Stuart. He was in the admissions office. There was a story about me.
Roy DeBerry: Driscoll. Phil Driscoll.
Aviva Futorian: Phil Driscoll, thank you. There was a story about my freedom school class in the New York Times and he saw it and he called me in Mississippi and said he would like to give a scholarship to a kid in Mississippi to go to Brandeis. I don't know, he didn't want to fly Roy for an interview. That would be too complicated. But he knew the father of one of the students at Brandeis was a judge in Alabama, and he thought maybe it would be good to have him interview Roy and could I drive Roy out there? I said sure. Of course, he didn't know at the time, reasonable people wouldn't have known, that you don't drive in an integrated car in Mississippi unless, and this is what we did, I'm in the front and he's my landscaper and I'm taking him to his job or I'm Ms. Daisy and sitting in the back and he's my chauffeur. That's how we went to Alabama. I have to tell you when we got there, it was a beautiful red brick house was great big pillars. We got in and I shook the judges hand and Roy held out his hand and it was clear that this judge had never shaking the hands of a black person. But he recovered very quickly and shook his hand. I think it showed the extent to which white people were also crazy victims of an insane system. Anyway, whatever the test was, Roy passed in and he went on to Brandeis. We would see each other periodically. In 1994, SNCC had a reunion in Jackson and we were all bemoaning the fact that kids today, black kids course, of white kids didn't know anything, but black kids didn't know what their grandparents, because 30 years parents and grandparents had gone through. We decided to start interviewing them. That's how this book came about. We started in 1995, and the book finally came out this last July. I must say we certainly learned a lot of things that we didn't know at the time though we thought we did. I think maybe I should stop now. Roy, maybe you want to go on. If there's time, I can talk more of that. I think it's enough.
Roy DeBerry: Thank you, Aviva. Storytelling is always powerful. Happy Hanukkah and also Merry Christmas coming up and also happy Kwanzaa coming up. I want to thank all the folks at AOC for tuning in and also our guests for being with us as well. Thanks to Napoleon and to Courtney and to Alan and to Engy for making this event happen. We in this virtual world, so I'm always pleased that people can connect us. There's always a place to be a very good friend like Aviva. I've known Aviva as Alan pointed out for more than 56 years and we've stayed in touch as she stated all those years. I think it's been a relationship that has been built on respect. This project, the hill country, is both about baby. This book is just one important piece of those efforts too, we have made had Ben County, I must say, and I hope I'm speaking for all the editors at this point. Well, the work has been hot over those 25 years, the effort has been a labor of love. As Aviva pointed out, we found out phase and learn things that we thought we knew, that we didn't know. We'll forever indebted to the people of this local area called Ben County who embraced us for so many years and also share their lives with us is not a easy thing as you know for people to open up and just share such private thing that these people did over period of years. Although the contexts it's been County. The focus, of course, is on these people and the compelling stories that they had the tail. As you read the book, voices, you will appreciate the power of the freedom songs. Because as you read the book, a lot of the young people and a lot of the other people that we interview will reference these freedom songs and how important music was doing his movement. I can remember myself as a young person go into these meetings and just being just taken up by the ceiling. After time, that was a way for people to get to the week, to get through the month, to deal with this oppressive situation was with song. These Freedom singers were beautiful. Same as we had people, for example, like Fannie Lou Hamer, and when I would talk about how the day, but one of the things that I always found impressive about Fannie Lou Hamer was our ability to see and to bring joy to people, notwithstanding the difficulty that they were facing. You appreciate that. The book is divided into themes. There are about 6-7 themes, beginnings. The lady, Ms. Emily Robertson that you saw on the clip was a 102-103 when we interviewed her, and there were other people as she was a little bit younger, so we wanted to get these people before they passed on and we did. Generations and then settlements, and you see that with someone that people who were integrators of the school, as you read the book, and why reactions. They did have reaction to the movement. Observers. There were a lot of people that did not participate in the movement, and they hit their reason for not participating, some of them because of fear, and some of them for other reasons. But there were people who were observers, are service past and present. Alan mentioned that earlier before we start this problem, we want to focus on the young people and how they saw things now and looking towards the future. The focus was on the local and not the mechanic people. We could've shows and people that had more name, say more name recognition, but we decided not to do that. There are a lot of books that have already been written, fields written and seen. Our people who are kind of in the movement, whether it's Dr. King or Lowry or Aviva or Moses or Fannie Lou Hamer, and others. Those people are great. But we wanted to focus on these local people because we think local people, in this case did it with primary sources has something to tell us. People would talk first hangers about mentioned, it's not every day you can talk to somebody. They can say my grandmother, my grandfather told me about a religion that took place. As a girl, I went up to the courthouse and I saw the body's stressed out. One of the LMS they come through in this book, for me, leadership and Aviva mentioned Harry Reaves, one of the leaders of this movement. Desire for education. People wanted to educate their kids, they knew, they hadn't had that opportunity, but they wanted it for their peers. Intelligence. Some of these people who have never gone as far as the grammar school, but they were very intelligent. Insight, courage, just terrific courage, determination, faith, great faith, and in militancy, there was an example one lady with Mr. Beir, who you'll read about in the book, who went out. Because some neighbors came up and he went and got his shotgun and shot into the air. When he came back he said there, you shouldn't shot on the air, you should have shot them. There were some people who were nonviolent, and was not willing to be nonviolent. Discipline. Nonviolence of course, was part of the movement and it was a part of this movement. Survival instinct. People did what was necessary to survive. Hard work. Miss Robinson and others like her, sand, if they've worked for two dollars a day or $0.50 a day. Or the case of another Miss Robinson talking about picking 300 pounds of cotton in one day. That's a lot of cotton. I tried to pick cotton, I can only pick about 100 pounds. Perseverance. Optimism. Love, a deep love for their family and for their church. Forgiveness. It's very difficult of guilt when you've been abused, and yet these people found ways to reveal collective action. One of the things about the civil rights movement across the board, but also true, had been counting was this notion of collective direct action. It was nightstand and steal and I don't need the thing was about being engaging in an action. Strength, wisdom, assists of justice, a wish for the beloved community that John Lewis and others talk about. Wanting to be debt free. People talk about badly or houses where the forage tab, and working very hard to pay off these housed within seven years or within 10 years and been proud of that, so they could tell their kids about it. But making an effort to be debt-free, so they would not be sharecroppers, they would not be beholden to anybody. Is that on land. Another thing that was very prevalent in his book, and the people that we interview, that faithful independence, the insatiable desire to register to vote. You saw that with Miss Robinson talking about, I don't feel I can be a citizen if I don't have the right to vote, and they will not get that registration. I don't care about the poll tax. I don't care about the literacy tests. All I do was necessary to get that right to vote and they're going to go out and vote. They took the long view, that things would get better, but just not it wouldn't happen automatically. They had to make it get better. But there was also, we talk about white reactors. But there was some European whites who showed acts of kindness. An example of a Miss Reddick, and we got to know her son because I worked with him. A lady who taught in the school system. Instead, look, now we're standing with others maybe doing, I will all treat all my student as equal. I'm on demand that they do their best, where there is an English or math or whatever. We had an example Miss Winney. That's an example of somebody who was able to transcend that environment. Or the boss of Walter Reed. Walter Reed was a electrician and a plumber, and so he worked for electrician and a plumber. He went to this house and the man told him, "Tell them to go fishing to day." He said, "If I have to time to go fishing, I'm not going to work on his health either. If you don't want him to be with me, then and I coming. There stand up for what you think is right. That is an example. Another example of a lady going to Miss Nunley, going to a segregated office and at that time, black room, white room, and she had waited all, he darkly and wait on all the white patients. And this woman who was incredible pain, and she had been waiting and waiting and waiting. Then when it was her time to go in, a white later walked through the door and the doctor said "Come on." The lady said "No, no, I'm not going. This lady is in pain, take her." Another example of can is where she didn't have to show. There was major obstacles and challenges that people face in this journey. One was poverty. We talked about debt to sharecropping system, unless Space Research, gave the best definition of sharecropping I've ever read. Cheap labor, two dollars a day. The caste system. Isabel Wilkerson and others talk about it, but we have talked about the caste system for a long time. We lived under it. This notion that you should know your place. Segregation, Paternalism. We have an example of a guy in Alabama saying that, slave once all bad. He was the first social security system. Lack of schooling, racism, violence, pity, aggression. Sometimes it was not about legend, sometime it was just the pettiness, humiliation. In this state sanctioned spy and intelligent agency, known as the Mississippi state sovereignty commission, I'm sure it could teach the Trump people a few things, but this notion that you was found people. When he came into the state, you gave out the laser numbers of people to the clan unto the law enforcement, and that's one of the reason why those three civil rights workers were killed in the Shelby County, Mississippi in 1864. Because the Sovereignty Commission had shared that information with the police, and had shared that information with the Klan. Now, were things I wasted that tablet so that big sans, and one was race mixing, and the other was homosexuality, and the other one, of course, was communist troublemakers. So you about trying to bring about change, you would fit into these categories. There are other examples, but let me just give you some examples of how some of these people spoke some stories. There's a story from Miss Sarah Robertson. She said, "You don't have to do much to get killed. You don't have to do much to get killed." Which remind me of the recent killing of Casey Goodson, a young black man gunned down recently in Ohio, Columbus, by a deputy sheriff as he enters his house. Another long lists of black men and women killed at the hands of raw police officers and deputies. Another core by Miss Robinson, referring to some European American. She says, "You have to make by people do. They won't do right on their own." She was quoting from Hillary Reaves, to whom the book is dedicated. Then there's Spears Richard in the book. We call him the great philosopher. He never had a chance to go into high-school. He never had a chance to go into college. But he could have been any bias for laugh to teach to. He says, "If you get an education, a job will look for you. But if you're not educated, you have to look for a job." Or the Doherseys, another family that was sharecroppers and later went on to Memphis. She says, "Our parents wanted us to get away from that sharecropping, get away from that top farm. She wanted us to make a living with a pencil." They said, "You know what? Every one of us," I think there were seven of them or eight of them. She said, "None of us like sharecroppers anymore. We all making our lives with a pencil." Or Bubble Griffin, another one who was a supervisor we interviewed in the book. We were interviewing him and he said that, "You should judge me for my knowledge, not the color of my skin." Then somebody asked the question. When do you think that will happen? He says, "When Jesus come back." While voices clearly focused on the local, there is a powerful universal message. We think there's an important local people speaking about live and visit happened more than a 100 years, over a 100 years, have much to say about our current situation and our present Democratic Republic called America, in the 21st century. As I've mentioned earlier, that book came out in July. There's a sale on now through day 7-15 for $21. We also in apparently published an e-book by the same name, Voices on the Mist of your Country, which is on Apple Book. We hope if you don't buy the hard copy or the solid copy, you can download the Apple Book. Alan, we will be more than happy at this point to entertain some questions. Thank you.
Alan Bertman: Thank you, Roy. The first question that we have goes as follows. Were the black people in the county in the 1960s aware of Ida B. Whales in our history, Ida being from Holly Springs?
Aviva Futorian: Well, Roy can answer that because he was from Holly Springs. I was working in Benton County and so I really have no idea what they knew, Roy?
Roy DeBerry: My sis was not a lot at the time. She was out of sight, out of mind. Her house is still in Holland, Spain. It's a museum now. Her recognition came later after she had travel, lived in Memphis, went out of Memphis, went to Chicago, ended up in England, became a major giant for [inaudible]. But at the time as we were growing up because a list was passed down through oral tradition on the books. Would tell you about anybody who was black or either contribution that they were making. The history books just talked about the happy slaves and how happy we were to be in our situation. That's most on the textbooks. The Alibi wheel thing came later. We didn't know very much about her when we were growing up. We found out about it later. Even though her house was only about probably four or five blocks from where we lived.
Aviva Futorian: Do we have time for me to mention one more little story about the Nelson's?
Alan Bertman: Yes.
Aviva Futorian: Alright. There were a number of sharecroppers in the county and the only way we knew about them was when I would be driving my car, which was pretty well known around there. Somebody would run out of the field and put his hand out. I assumed it was for a newspaper and I was right, the freedom train. That was my only involvement with sharecroppers, that they would run out of the field to get a copy of the newspaper which was very much forbidden. When we came back 30 years later, we asked Mrs. Robinson, did she know of any sharecroppers who were involved in the movement? She mentioned a man by the name of Buck Nelson, who by now was dead. But she understood that he and his children were kicked off the land because they refused to not participate in a school boycott that was part of the movement. We found them 30 years later and the kids were grown up, of course, they were all in Memphis. In fact, that's exactly what had happened that the father had said to the landlord, Billy Carpenter, "You don't tell me how to raise my kids and I don't tell you how to work your land." He said, "Okay you're out of here. I want you out by tonight." That night they had to spend in an abandoned leaky barn. They ended up finding a black person's land to work on. It wasn't terrible but they certainly didn't like this man and the end of the story. I don't know, I wouldn't call it the end, it was an interesting thing. Many years later, the youngest son who had been five at the time and by this time was 19, was hanging out in the local store and the landlord, Billy Carpenter came by and by this time he was suffering from dementia. He walked over to the young boy, young man and said, "I have a $100, " which he did, "I'll give you a $100 if you'll tell me where my house is." The young boy said, "You don't have to give me a $100, you live in that red house up on the hill." That was the story and he didn't take the $100. But anyway, they were then interviewed and a very interesting section in the book and I did want to mention them.
Roy DeBerry: I'm glad she mentioned out a veto because the follow-up to their house, so is the fact that he gave a reason why he said, he was a practicing christian and therefore it was not a hidden field right to.
Aviva Futorian: Oh, I didn't remember that.
Roy DeBerry: This notion of stone for stone. That just because he treated me poorly or he treated my family poor. Again, I want to return the favor or luck of easily do it and take his $100 and just sit them in a different direction if I wanted to.
Aviva Futorian: Yeah.
Roy DeBerry: That's an example of again, that kind of forgiveness that I referenced earlier.
Alan Bertman: One of the questions also came up in a before I ask the question, I want to tell everyone that they can feel free to unmute if you want to ask Aviva and Roy questions directly. But did people refuse to be interviewed for your book for any reason?
Aviva Futorian: I don't think so.
Roy DeBerry: I don't think so. We were frightening and Avogadro, we knew some of the people are ready because we have worked with them during the '60s. I believe I have worked with people in Benton County and much more than I had because I had worked in Marcia County. Those we didn't know because it's important to build relationship, right? Those we didn't know, people told us about them and introduced us to them. By their introduction it made it much more easy to go in and interview people. But before we start to interview people, we spent a lot of time getting to know people. We were also very sensitive to what they wanted. They wanted to be in the living room as opposed to the kitchen best where they were if they wanted to be outside on a tree instead of inside the house, that's where we went.
Roy DeBerry: We did everything to accommodate the wishes of the people and respect the people that we were interviewing. I think they return it in kind.
Aviva Futorian: The other thing that happened was we started in 1995 and started by interviewing people that we knew and had been active in the movement. In 2003, there was another reunion and our county hosted part of the reunion and we had that's when we heard about John Lions involved with his quite a filmmaker in making a film of our first ten interviews. The film was so successful that I think after 2003, we never had trouble. In fact, we have people calling and asking if they could be interviewed.
Roy DeBerry: I think you have found with any people have about Alexa beyond film. That's right, that's exactly right. People talk about that film and hopefully we ever find anything, in fact it's called Madman stayed on freedom is a right Aviva? You hope you'll get a chance to see it. Speaking about film, we hope at some point get a documentary going as well.
Alan Bertman: What reaction has there been from the white community to your work? Meaning the interviews? Has there been surprise about what the interviewee said at all?
Aviva Futorian: First of all, we did interviews, some white people who were friendly, and some white people who weren't friendly?
Roy DeBerry: Correct.
Aviva Futorian: The answer is, I have no idea. Other than the white people, there were one or two white people who were friendly. I have no idea what the white community thought, do you Roy?
Roy DeBerry: I'm on the ground. I haven't gotten any reaction yet from the book and it's been widely circulated. I will say to your point, the white people that we interviewed, of course I didn't interview those, we decided. Again, we'll talk about that in our editor's note as to the most strategic way to interview and not to interview. But there were people who were very frank about how itself. For example, these young white guy that you and John and Stephen interviewed with his daughter standing there in the garage making it very clear that he didn't believe in race mixing. Then if his daughter decides to date a black guy, he would never speak to her again. She was gone, she was a goner. Or in the case of his daughter, if she came home and said the same thing, he would react the same way. They were pretty frank about how they felt. There's another guy who had sharecroppers on his farm. He talked about this, I thought that was very interesting because my sense of history was just a little bit differently but he was making a point about his plan cottoned. He had asked the boy to put poison on the weeds. The boy had put poison on the cotton, of course, to just talked to cotton. He took that to me that the boy was ignorant, had made a mistake. I took it to admit the boy knew exactly what he's doing and did it deliberately. That's the kind of different perspective that you have all history of when you interpret it. They were very frank about how they felt.
Alan Bertman: Got you. Your initial follow-up question, were you able to interview white residents as easily as black residents?
Aviva Futorian: The guy who was the landlord. Now, I have bothered him for a long time and I told him that I wanted to do an interview on the sharecropping system and how successful it was. He said it wasn't. But it took a long time. Other than that, there was one guy who was possibly a very good guy and I never was able to get him. But no, they were not as ready as black people were.
Roy DeBerry: Of course, the focus of the book was that civil rights movement and been County, that was a major focus. This was a footnote part of the book. That was not our major focus. Obviously, I'm glad we got that in as part of the book, but it was not our major focus because these people clearly were not involved in civil rights movement.
Alan Bertman: What was the biggest surprise you encountered in doing this amazing work?
Roy DeBerry: Aviva?
Aviva Futorian: Well, I want to say something but then I'll have to think. Learning that Mr. Reaves had visited every single black person when they would turn 21 and told them they had to register to vote. They all commented on it and he was their leader. He had died by the time we did the interviewing, so we couldn't interview him. That was a surprise. It wasn't a surprise in the sense that I would have expected him to do something like that, but I didn't know anything about it. Roy, what was your biggest surprise?
Roy DeBerry: I guess I was surprised to hear from Beir's daughter rest that level of militancy because I hadn't heard that express from many other people we interview where in this case she was saying, I want you to take a walk boy let us to defeating yourself. I was not surprised by Jacque Natalie and Mr. Thompson because I had already heard stories about them. One of the things, as you read the book, some of the people were saying he was the bravest black man that existed in Benton County at that time. Even that people who were put a physically violence, they just weren't going to take care of themselves. If you use the term, if you mess with them then you expected them to return in kind. But they were also very helpful during the movement itself because when a client came and burned down the churches or attempt to burn down the Freedom House. These were the two black men along with the FBI because the FBI usually would follow their lead as opposed to the other way around. They would go in and get these guys out of the way.
Aviva Futorian: They chase them down. In fact, they chased them to their house. At that point, these were the bad brothers, they burned down their own house. Apparently, they might have thought there were things in there that couldn't be found or shouldn't be found.
Roy DeBerry: These brothers were the ones as you read the book, these awful guys who would drive around with these flatbed trucks and would have shotguns and just literally intimidate people. People asking around mostly just harassment and so, but people are afraid of them because they didn't know what they would do and so they were called the bad brothers.
Aviva Futorian: Yeah. I think my other biggest surprise was Mrs. Johnson, the one who said you talk about a Negro woman who works and she picked 300 pounds of cotton a day. She did not want to interview her because she was never involved in the movement and she never spoke to me either during my two years there. But one of her neighbors said you've got to interview her. And it turned out to be one of the most interesting interviews that I ever did. And she was a fascinating woman and she said the reason she didn't get involved in the movement was she thought she knew white people better than we did, she knew that they were killers, and she was afraid they would kill her.
Roy DeBerry: She was openly frank about that because I think that element was always the elephant in the room with the element. And she was I think upfront with just stating that I am fearful. I didn't want to get involved because I knew something could happen to me and my family. And that's so human for people to react that way sometimes.
Alan Bertman: Question from the audience snakes Bob Zellner was given refugee Brandeis in 1964, with the other people involved with snakes at Brandeis that you're aware of?
Aviva Futorian: Miriam Glickman? I didn't know her at Brandeis and I don't know when she was at Brandeis, but she wasn't Brandeis. And she was actually a white member of the snake, which was very rare.
Roy DeBerry: Actually, Hoffman did work that was going on and I think they had something in New York or Boston, were heavily involved, but can pop a little bit.
Aviva Futorian: No, Abby actually created this Liberty house in the village in New York where they sold artisans stuff made by people in Mississippi and we did a very good job. Yeah.
Alan Bertman: Well, do you have any plans right now to partner with the school system or youth clubs to have your book read or broadly right, by young people?
Roy DeBerry: I have spent time and Viva can speak for Chicago, but I have spent time with the Mississippi Department of Education. And there book person ask a name to make it because Mississippi now has a law that says civil rights ought to be taught in the classroom, right? It's been sort of voluntary before, but now there's a lot of its mandates. The problem is a lot of the teachers that go through teacher education programs don't have the right material, and so we wanted to make sure that they had some other kind of materials to teach when they desire to do that. But it's such a bureaucracy because what happens with these state education departments and with these book people is that they deal with the big guys. And so they have these huge contracts, and a lot of it had to do nothing do with education that has to do with money. So if you are somehow get tied into that, I can instead network is very difficult to get your booking. And however, I have talked to some local school superintendents, and because they do have some discretion about whether that to make the book part of their curriculum and I think we'll make some progress there, now this pandemic as slows some things down and we hope to pick up some momentum once this pandemic is over. But we have tried and at the local level haven't done very much as a national level.
Alan Bertman: I believe Roy, you had told me earlier that the revenues from the book are high school students scholarships in Benton County?
Roy DeBerry: That's correct. Every penny that is our main funding book that's published by the universe person Mississippi, as well as the e-book that we and apparently published on Apple. Are those processes are going to the scholarship program to help high school kids who have some ability and engaged in their community and want to go on to college. And but then I mean, I have the resources to do so and we want to help with that process.
Alan Bertman: You know, it was interesting historically because Benton County was originally shuttled by the Chicago, the people of Chicago Nation, and that's what the Trail of Tears began. And that kind of leads me to my next question about why Benton County. And are you aware of any oral history projects in any other Mississippi counties?
Roy DeBerry: Wow.
Aviva Futorian: Wow.
Roy DeBerry: Go ahead Viva.
Aviva Futorian: Benton County. Well, three reasons. The first reason was because I knew it. I mean, that was the county that I had worked in and I knew the people. Second reason was they were among the most active County's civil rights movement in the state. And thirdly, because Mr. Reaves had apparently gotten everybody ready, getting them to register to vote. Roy, Any other thoughts?
Roy DeBerry: I think that pretty much covers it. By the way, I will say joint did my book, which is local people, which is a very well-known book. But it focuses on the soul of the whole state. And he used a lot of secondary sources. I think the thing that makes our book unique is that everything is a primary source.
Alan Bertman: Okay.
Roy DeBerry: And a few references here and there.
Alan Bertman: NO, we're coming on time so one final question would be, I'm getting questions from the audience about the interest in hearing your respective experiences of Brandeis and how that impacted both of you moving forward. I'm sorry, but I want us to be sorry to say that we couldn't answer all the questions being asked by the audience at this time.
Roy DeBerry: I thank you for your questions right away. Go ahead, Viva. Is Viva still there?
Aviva Futorian: Yeah. Did you ask a question? I missed it.
Alan Bertman: I'm sorry. It was a long question. Some of the audience members would be interested in hearing about your respective experiences at Brandeis and how that impacted your moving both I guess what my abuser or.
Aviva Futorian: Interesting, when I was at Brandeis in the fifties. And that was a non-movement kind of time. And my god was Herbert Marcuse, who was a very serious Marxist and believed that you couldn't rush the revolution ahead of time. And so it was silly to demonstrate or become active. So to that extent, Brandeis didn't affect me, but in fact, it did. Certainly my interest in people who were not treated right. Very much came from Brandeis.
Roy DeBerry: I think that the movement had already sort of started to shape me to where I got the Brandeis in the movement at Brandeis further shape and I think the idea of putting some thought and some, some practice and just being exposed, as Viva says to various professors. And it shows the associate department head a lot to do with framing things perhaps differently. One of the things, I learned during that summer, the snake, for example, there's normally just a class I took, the prep class, but also this exposed me to some first-rate teachers from around the country doing this summer and engaged us to think beyond the status quo. There's a notion that black here for some reason should be heard and not seen. And you should not question. I think that Brandeis just shop windows, tombs that forced me to do something that I had already started to do as a young person was to question authority and to question why these have to be a certain way. Because one of the things going up, I was told where, you know, it was. That's the way it is. Well, is this news perhaps it can change and is not going to happen automatically, you have to make it happen. And so I think Brandeis just helped me to sharpen that piece of it.
Aviva Futorian: I should also add that what really triggered my interest in snakes and in Mississippi were letters I started getting in 1964 or 63 for Mandy Sam Stein. Some of you may remember Mandy, I think he was a year or two behind me. And he got very involved with Snake and Mississippi early on and started writing to a lot of people. And I think that's what got Abby involved also.
Roy DeBerry: Analogist chemicals with this piece is, although it's not a direct question, one of the things that struck me about stuff and these people were talking about back in the thirties and forties with respect to voter suppression. At that time it was a pose tax and then she tests and interprets the constitution, all of that. And here we are in 2020, having to engage with those same current discussions about voter suppression. And people not freely been able to reach the vote and in freely been able to cast their vote. Just seemed to me, so I run it, and maybe that's not the right word, but interests in just opposition that we're talking about, things that happened historically, but so many of those things are still relevant today in 2020.
Aviva Futorian: Right.
Alan Bertman: Yes. I had the privilege of reading your book in chapter seven. You go into that by looking back and looking ahead. And I encourage everyone to at least, take a look at the text and possibly order the book. I want to thank both Roy and Aviva for an informative and engaging presentation. I want to thank everyone who participated today. I forgot to mention Napoleon and Courtney for their time. We look forward to seeing you at another Brandeis Alumni of Color event soon. Again thank you for being with us today and I want to wish everyone on behalf of our office, peace, health, and happiness this holiday season. Again, thank you.