San Antonio's cultural experience museum..

The Civil Rights Movement in San Antonio
Reverend Claude William Black Jr.
Birth: November 28, 1916

"Progress Is Not a Permanent Structure"

We're going to be talking about the Civil Rights movement and its aftermath here in South Texas. Would you tell me where and when you were born?

I was born here in San Antonio on November 28, 1916, to Claude and Cora Black and grew up in the city. I have lived here, going through public school [starting with] Brackenridge School, which was the elementary school on the corner of Hackberry and Center. And then after moving past the fifth grade, we then went into Douglass, which was a junior high school. You went from the sixth grade until the eleventh, through high school at that time, and I finished there in 1933.

And what were your parents' names and occupations?

My father's name is Claude Black; I'm a junior. My mother is Cora Black. My father was a Pullman porter, where he worked for fifty years. My mother was a housewife.

[The railroad] was quite lucrative for blacks in those days.

Yes, it was one of the better jobs, not from the point of salary, but from the point that, in serving the public, the public was responsive to the service received from the porter with tips. When my daddy came off of a trip, he would then empty his pockets on the bed, and we'd all gather together counting his tips-have some idea of what kind of money he made on that trip.

What was it like growing up black in San Antonio?

It offered awfully limited experience interracially. I'm not sure that this was true of all. I began at fourteen working for an uncle who had a store with a delivery of ice and wood, as well as kind of a convenience store-a 7-11 of that generation, a neighborhood store. And I started driving a truck, delivering ice to a number of people in the summer for the old-fashioned icebox that held ice that was delivered to them. And I spent all of my time working for him through my college years. So I never had a real opportunity to work in the integrated community.

I had a brief experience with a job in the downtown, serving as a janitor in one of the stores. But it was a very limited experience. So my experiences at the integrated level were limited and, in many instances, negative because of their limitations. I can remember going into the downtown area and recognizing that all of the fountains were marked. You either had a fountain for white or fountain for colored, as they put it. Your restrooms were marked: restroom for white or restroom for colored.

Then there were no major restaurants that you could enter in. I saw no [black] clerks in the major stores. There were no tellers in any of the banks. There were no black bus drivers. There were no black firemen. There were very few black policemen. In many instances, the black policemen that I saw operated in the black community.

There were always stories that were part of family conversations about hostility and about the unpleasant experiences of blacks-not only in San Antonio but in other areas. So you built up a kind of expectation that if the person was white, you would not expect fairness out of him. You would not expect him to treat you as he would treat others. And I think that was the product, also, of limited contact.

Could you tell some of the stories you heard as a child?

Oh, I heard stories of some conflict that my father would have with the conductor, who wanted him to do things that he felt were not appropriate in terms of his job. And that conductor had the power to simply tell him to go home and to report him to the superintendent, and he would be either grounded or be fired. And naturally any conflict that my father had with the conductor brought tension to the whole household, because we knew that if he was fired that meant that the whole economy of our family life was going to be changed. And we also knew that his recourse, or remedy for it, was not that good-that he could not simply take exception to the position of the man and then find himself reestablished on his job. So there was always tension in those stories that were told.

Then there were stories that were told from my family point of view of resentment that would arise even from customers. People who were on the railroad would sometimes give him a hard time.

But I suppose the major stories came out of the general community, because there was always a climate within the black community, in that period, when the community developed conversations around survival.

How does a man deal with tension like that when he doesn't have any real recourse?

How do you survive in a hostile community? You started that early in your childhood-survival skills. I can remember if I saw a group of white guys coming towards me that I thought might want to start something just for the sake of starting something, then I sought to avoid them rather than confront them. If it meant crossing the street, I crossed the street. But a black person growing up at that period was always sensitive and could anticipate the kind of hostility he's likely to run into.

And then there were stories told by blacks that they handed down, as to how they were able to deal with some negative situation. And we remembered those stories about how they dealt with it.

Sort of like morals.

I had an uncle who was a fairly dark man, who was married to an aunt who was a very, very fair woman. And, on one occasion, he was driving his car and his wife was seated in the back, and a policeman stopped him and was about to give him a ticket. And he simply said, "Well, you see, I'm driving for this lady. And I'm sorry that, you know, that I made this.."

"You drive for this lady?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, go ahead. Go ahead, boy."

You see, what he did was use the fairness of his wife, since the man could not tell whether she was white or black, and escaped at least paying a ticket. Now that's just one instance where individuals have used the strategy.

Another thing, I think (along with the fact that blacks were thrown into this position, there was also within the spirit of the white-maybe it's a human condition) is that to be able to rescue somebody, [you had to be able] to command a situation in which you had the power to determine. That attribute blacks used for their own survival. That is on the other side of that coin and what blacks have called "being an Uncle Tom." Because what he was doing was simply playing up to the pride and the sense of power that he knew this man wanted.

It's kind of like the Bre'r Rabbit tales-make a fool out of him.

He was able to at least survive whatever he was facing. He used it as a strategy. As time went on, that [image] became very undesirable for many blacks. But I think, in many instances, as we look back over it, we get a better understanding of it as a strategy of survival. When you recognize, here's a man who cannot read very well; he's trying to buy property; he's afraid that somebody is taking advantage of him. So he goes to the man and says to him, "Well, I don't know much about this. I don't understand it. Would you read it to me and would you tell me what I ought to do?" Now that kind of humility from a man who maybe is older than the man he's talking to was resented by many of the younger blacks, you see.

But I have found even in my experiences as pastor, blacks that have used that method have been very, very creative. Now what they've done, they've come to one person and asked him, "How does that read? What does it say?" They gather the information of that person, then they go to another person and take the same position, "How do you read this? What does it say?" Maybe they go to three or four people that they have respect for. Now when they come out of it, they have got three or four positions on what this is all about. And I have had them bring papers to me, and I'd start reading and I'd say, "Oh, this means...." They'd say, "Oh, no, that don't mean that." [laughter] And I'm here thinking that I'm here to help them, and they are really here to have me endorse what they've already decided, what they've gathered as a result of one contact after another. And it has been a strategy; it was a strategy of survival.

They got what they wanted.

They got what they wanted. They got the land. They got the house. They understood where their protection was and what they could expect.

Did you use that strategy when you were growing up? Do you remember?

I was sort of protected from this whole kind of experience because I worked for my uncle and I worked primarily in the black community. I didn't get too far out of the black community. I was not called upon to use the strategy. I'm not saying that if I had been caught up in some situations that I might not have felt that my survival was worth more than my pride at the time.

I can remember an experience during the war when I caught a bus in-I think it was Palestine-on my way to Crockett. During the war there were a lot of people riding the bus. The thing that irritated me was that I was the first in line to get on the bus, but the bus driver told me to step aside, and I stepped aside. And then he filled the bus with whites all the way to the back seat. The only seat that I could have sat on during that period was the back seat, but he filled it from the back seat all the way up, which meant that the only option, the only opportunity, I had was to stand, and there was standing room only. Well, I was angry because I was first in line and I had to stand. By standing on the aisle, I was standing over a white woman, and she was seated next to a white man, and, as I stood there, he turned to me and said, "Boy, step back, get back." And, at that moment in my life, I said, "I have gotten back as far as I intend to today." Now, my own sense of humanity made me say that, not my good judgment. My good judgment would have taught me that if the bus driver had heard me or if this fellow had taken exception to it, he could have stopped that bus, gone into the station, gotten a policeman, and said, "This fellow's giving me a lot of trouble." They could have taken me off without any word from me [and] carried me to jail for disturbing the peace. I would have had no recourse. So when you're in that kind of situation, I suppose I have responded more with silence than I have with words. I have surrendered to the situation in silence because those who played the part were aggressively seeking to gain something. They were working on property, they were working on jobs, they were working on trying to sustain their families. Whereas most of the situations I was in were brought about by my movement more than by what I was trying to do or what I was trying to get.

I think if I had had greater contact with whites, I would have been able to distinguish or to make an evaluation based upon persons, rather than upon races. And I came to that ability to do that while I was in seminary in Newton Center, Massachusetts. The Andover Newton Theological Seminary provided me with the first opportunity to enter into an integrated situation, which allowed me to evaluate and to be able to make.to measure whites, in terms of their conduct rather than in terms of their color.

I met a man from Virginia who came with the same kind of racial bias toward blacks that I carried in me toward whites. We were both very opinionated as to what we felt-what he felt a black man was, and I was very well informed on what I knew a white man was. And we, as a result of the class relationships, studying and that sort of thing, we got to know each other fairly well.

When you're absent, when you're separated from each other, a lot of myths gather. One of the myths that I carried was that his extraordinary opportunities made him a lot smarter than me. That was a myth, because I discovered that he was having the same kind of problems passing the courses that I was having and that he really wasn't any smarter than I was. But you carry that kind of myth when there has been no dialogue, no relationship. Because you say, "Well, this fellow has had all these opportunities; I know he knows more than I do." In addition to that, you felt that his social life was different. I discovered that his girl didn't want to marry a preacher no more than my girl wanted to marry a preacher, you know. We were having the same kind of dialogue in our letters with our girlfriends. All of a sudden, as I looked at him, I said, "Who's telling us that we are not like each other? Who's dictating that to us? Somebody outside of us. History, customs, dictating all of this to us." And I made a decision-I think he made the same kind of decision. If we don't like each other, it's going to be on our own personal basis; we're not going to let others tell us whether we're going to like each other or not. At that moment I considered myself liberated, because I no longer dealt with whites on the basis of their whiteness. I dealt with them on the basis of their character, on the basis of who they were. And when you can make a choice of people based upon character, you're liberated in our society. You can invite people; you can enjoy people. You know, you're not bound; you don't go to them already with a prejudice, with an already prearranged idea of what they're going to do to you and what they're going to be to you. You can open up to them.

And to live in that kind of society, I think, is what it means to be a person in this kind of world, because this kind of world is a world of great racial and cultural diversity. And if you're going to really reap the benefit of that rich mixture, you've got to be able to come at it with an openness that allows you to absorb that which is good and to eliminate that which is evil. And I call that liberation-spiritual liberation around a racial issue.

Why did you go to Newton Center as opposed to the historically all-black schools, like Bishop?

Well, you see, I had gone to Morehouse; I had finished Morehouse with a B.S. degree, but I wanted that advanced seminary training. There was not a single seminary, I mean, a first-class seminary, in the state of Texas that would receive me; they were all white. I had to go outside the state to get seminary training. You see, the church has had a difficult time dealing with the whole issue of race. And it hasn't been just Protestants-the Catholics, as well. All of us. You see, one of the great problems, even now, theologically, is that your inability to deal appropriately with your brother, no matter what his color is, taints your understanding of God. If all people are created by him, you cannot see God as you ought to see him if you cannot accept a brother, a neighbor. It all goes together. So, we've had theological problems, religious institutional problems, that have grown out of the dreadful experience of this country in the area of slavery. And we've had to come to terms.

We're still in the process of coming to terms. Not just with our civil rights, but with the understanding, our human concerns. You know, how do we deal with people as human beings if we cannot deal with them with an openness in their diversity? Knowing that they are different, knowing that we are different, but yet there is a common bond of humanity-they weep when they are sorry; they smile.

I remember an experience I had in Cairo, Egypt. I was favored to be able to go to Cairo once, and, when I got to Cairo, I looked around. There's a whole lot of people in Cairo, Egypt, that look like me. I felt perfectly at home, but I couldn't understand their language. [The] language is Arabic [and] to me, as I listen to it, [it] gives me the impression that folks are mad about something. You know, it's sort of harsh, in my opinion. Maybe I have not heard people speak it [before]. But for the experiences that I had there, I could never tell when men were not fussing, arguing with one another, because of the nature of the language. I went outside of the hotel, and a fellow was trying to sell me something, and he was talking to me in Arabic, and it appeared that he thought that I ought to understand what he was saying. And he started getting angry. So I turned to my wife, and I said, "Now, I cannot understand a word this fellow is saying. But his appearance is universal. He is mad! [laughter] He's angry with me! And I'm going to get out of here. [laughter] I don't know what he's saying in words, but I know what he's saying in his facial expressions." That's universal, that goes everywhere, that's his humanity. This is what I mean when I say the common bond, you know.

Was this notion of finding our common humanity a priority for leaders like you during the time of the Civil Rights movement when a lot of things were going on?

My earliest experience, my teenage experience brought about a commitment to bring changes at the level of race. If I had any fantasies at all, my fantasies were: how can I bring about a correction of what I thought, I felt, were the injustices that I was experiencing. I can remember cutting my father's yard and lying in the grass and seeing the clouds pass over and dreaming-and sometimes my dreams were violent dreams. How can I blow up something to bring about change? If I had but one moment to live, if life was over for me, how could I use that one moment to bring about some change? That kind of fantasy. During that period [before the Civil Rights movement] I think that was not just true of me, that was true of all youngsters that were growing up, that we've got to bring some changes here. I cannot tolerate this matter of having to go in the back of the Majestic Theater. I can't tolerate this idea of having to stand at the window of Frenchie's-that used to be a restaurant right across from the SP [Southern Pacific] station that sold excellent ham sandwiches. And if you wanted them, as a black person, you couldn't even go in; you had to stand at the window there, and they made your order and handed them out to you. How can I tolerate second-hand books I see in the school, you know? How can I tolerate not being able to go and have, with my family, a picnic in Brackenridge Park when I'm paying-when my family is paying taxes in the city? How can I tolerate that?

So for you it was more a generational thing.

If I was going to be a doctor, I was going to be a doctor to try to break that barrier. If I was going to be a lawyer, I was going to be a lawyer to try to break that barrier. It was a common thread that ran through everything you hoped to be. [It was] a common thread for my friends, as well.

[My father] went as far as he could go; he did as much [as he could.] For example, my father, my hero in my family, [considered A. Philip Randolph a hero.] A. Philip Randolph was the head of the Pullman Porter's Union. He was a man of integrity. He was also a man who made the first announcement, publicly, on a national level, of the march on Washington. Long before Martin Luther King was even talking about it, he was talking about it with Roosevelt-talking about a march on Washington in protest. I resented the fact.I came here forty-five years ago, and I was invited to go out to Lackland to the military installation because they did not have a military chaplain. I'd go over into, I guess it was Company F, and there were barracks way back in the backside of Lackland with nothing but black soldiers, you see. That was before the integration of soldiers. All of those kinds of incidents built up in you. Even when I came out of seminary, I came back to Texas because I believed that the fellows going into World War II, when they got back, weren't going to accept the things that they had accepted.

What role do you think returning veterans had in the Civil Rights movement?

I think the black veterans played a great role [in the Civil Rights movement] in terms of attitude, the risk factor that went into the protest movements.

[In the '30s, as a teenager,] I was a member of the Youth Council of the NAACP , and we were investing our money in terms of the legal approach to remedy. This was way back there, yes. As a matter of fact, the great contribution that Martin Luther King, in my opinion, made to the whole effort of blacks toward greater participation in this society was that he gave them an option, an alternative. Before that time we were following what was really the laborious, difficult, legal approach to things. Now, certainly, in 1954 the decision-Supreme Court decision regarding schools - provided an excellent expression of release from legal boundaries. But now Martin Luther King brought forth methods of using the implications of that law, you see.

We thought that we had eliminated the base, the very foundation of the legal basis for the continued segregation of blacks. We saw that as significant-it was of significance-but I think we gave it more value than it really had, in terms of our experiences. Because then we had to go into the protest movement.

And the protest movement required, number one, a lot of moral courage. It required, also, a tremendous ability for discipline. I can remember Bayard Rustin during my seminary days, who was a part of the protest movement and the organizer for the march on Washington, I think. He was a man who, early in his life, advocated nonviolent change. I can remember when he came to my seminary; we heard him as an integrated group. But four of us, as black students, came back and said this guy has got to be off his rocker. They'll never change this thing nonviolently! It's going to require violence. That's why the returning soldiers, who had some understanding of violence, might be our greatest asset. That's why we felt something's going to really happen when they get back.

But the truth of the matter is that when Martin Luther King came out with a nonviolent approach to change, he had to not only deal with the hostility of the white community in terms of that change, but he had to change the disposition of blacks.

How could you reconcile your Christian beliefs with the notion that society wasn't going to change without violence?

Christianity has never had a problem with violence. [laughter] The problem, when you look at Christian institutions, the way they operate, people who were considered pacifists were not always welcome into the high levels of the Christian community. These were sort of exceptions out here, and, when the fellow talked about being a pacifist, he was talking about trying to resolve our differences in a nonviolent way. I think it was for a more practical reason. You see, there was a definite effort-as you know, the Black Power movement burst on the stage, during the time that Martin Luther King was there, with a call for violence. Not necessarily a call for violence, but to respond to a violent society in the same way that they were being received, you see. To do whatever, as the issue was, is necessary. Use all necessary means to achieve your freedom. That meant use nonviolent means, as well as violent means. All-whatever came down. And you had Stokely Carmichael, you had the Black Panthers.

I think the judgment of the masses of black people came as a result of their practical experience over many, many generations. See, one of the things that the leaders of violence misunderstood [was] the disposition of the black man and what he'd learned from history. First, the Black Panthers thought if we hit the streets with guns and ammunition and violence, the black masses will join us. And, as a result of their misunderstanding of the black community, they hit the streets with their guns and with their violence, and they were isolated and just ripped off, one by one, until they were almost totally destroyed.

What the black community understood was-where are our ammunition factories? Where are we going to get our guns? They knew that if they were going to get into a violent fight with the dominant white establishment, that they were falling right into the trap. They could not produce as much violence as the man in charge could produce.

So it was really a practical, not a philosophic, decision.

And, therefore, you had to have training sessions on how to do it, on how to take that abuse.

And, you know, sometimes, I'm not too sure that all love has to be inward. I think love at some point has to be commanded, that you have to love under command. You have to love because it's the appropriate thing to do and not just wait until you feel like you ought to love somebody. You've got to love them because it's the appropriate thing to do. Yeah, that's the only way you can deal with unlovable people! [laughter] You've got to love, in spite of them. So that's loving under command, in that sense.

It sounds like you supported the Black Panther notion; you just thought they couldn't succeed? Is that accurate?

¨No. You can't stand around and let people abuse you; you've got to stand up like a man, you know. I had that kind of motivation. But I also, in the back of my mind, recognized that you've got to have.that any great movement has to be significant enough and understood well enough that it can draw into it the masses of individuals and still be effective.

I felt that a violent approach [of the Black Panthers] would not have been effective, yes. I can think of very practical results of rejection of it. Although, I think, in my experiences, my lack of personal experiences with a number of whites at that time, I had come to feel that I really didn't have as much personal hostility toward individual whites as I did the structured kind of activity that I saw in the white community. I didn't think of some individual white person when I had to go in the back of the Majestic Theater in order to go up there. I didn't think of some individual white person when I could not eat inside of Frenchie's. I thought of the system. I thought of the overall establishment. And that, I think, tends to curtail your violence, your sense of personal violence. I did not grow up with an idea that I wanted to kill some white man, you know. No, never. But I did grow up with a feeling that we've got to get rid of this [system] somehow.

In talking to some other black leaders around the state, I've gotten the impression that the view of Martin Luther King was that he just happened to be at the right place at the right time. But you seem to suggest that he really did have something different and unique to offer the black community.

You know, I think that greatness is often the uniqueness of history, in a sense, that he was in the right place at the right time. I cannot believe it was an accident of history. I think it was a kind of divine planning. Because here's a man, who is steeped in the concept and philosophy of nonviolence, in a city that was going to put him into the national limelight. You know? For example, [before ] he came into the national limelight in leading the Montgomery movement in terms of busses, if you'll go back and recover that history, you'll discover that they had the same kind of movement in Baton Rouge, but it never brought about the kind of unity and the kind of effect that it did in Montgomery.

As a matter of fact, when it started in Montgomery, Martin Luther King went to Baton Rouge to talk with the ministers there who were in the leadership of it in Baton Rouge and then came back to Montgomery. But it never reached the kind of pinnacle, the kind of results, in Baton Rouge that it reached in Montgomery. Here is the youngest preacher, minister, in town, almost, that the older ministers put at the head of the movement. There's just too many things that sort of fit into the whole picture for me to just believe that this is an accident, you know. History has been turning around men who were in the proper place with the proper understanding. Lincoln, for an example-he believed in the states, the unity of the states. As a result of that, he had to accept some other ideas. Freedom of slaves. Now, if you look at Lincoln, you say, "Why, how in the world did this man become president of the United States?"

Here is Martin Luther King, Ph.D.-number one, Baptist preacher with a Ph.D. If you'd looked all over the country, you might not have found more than ten at that time. Didn't find many Baptist preachers with Ph.Ds. Next thing is, his whole philosophy and understanding of social change had been shaped by Gandhi. He was prepared to implement it. Now, he had a tough fight with the black community on that, bringing them into an awareness. That's why, when he found favorable whites, he would say to them, "You've got to give me some victories. I can't hold back the influence of those who are calling for violence unless I can show some victories in nonviolence." And that was true.

And, as a result of that, he did a great deal for America, not just for blacks. He did a great deal for America, allowing us to deal forthrightly with the issue of race. And while we recognize that all of the problems have not been solved, we do know that we are positioned, as a result of his activity, to resolve some of the problems ahead of us.

It's my impression that there wasn't much participation or representation from Texas in the inner circle around King. Is that true? And why?

I think the Southeast had a greater tradition of racism than the Southwest. I remember the first time I went to Memphis and saw even doors in the railroad station marked for "colored" and for "white." That was shocking to me, because I knew that there were places in San Antonio where only blacks were in the station, you know, that's where they were and whites were in another, but I never saw doors that led to the ticket office, you know, that black folk went through one door, white folks went through another door.

Just like in Montgomery, black people put their money in at the front door and then walked outside and came in the back door to be seated. Well, always my experience in San Antonio has been [that I] went in the front door, walked to the back. Didn't have to put my money in and then come back out and go in the back door. So that was sort of unusual.

There was also a kinship, a paradox, a kinship between whites and blacks in the Deep South. In my opinion, blacks in their relationship with whites in this community did not have the same kind of warm relationship. He was working for them; he was an employee, but there was no real [relationship]. For an example, many of the blacks did domestic work in Georgia and all, and they reared, helped rear, children. Some of that was being done [here], but this was also balanced off by Hispanics, Mexican Americans and all; so you got a mixture here. You never had that real, direct warmth.

I can remember, I invited once a musician from one of the major white churches in town to come and work with my choir because he had a reputation of being particularly good with hymns. And I wanted my choir to be also able to handle hymns well. And I invited him to come and work with the choir. And he felt that, while he was here, invited, that he would share with them some personal experience that he'd had with blacks.

So he got up and started talking with the choir; he began by telling them about his black mammy and how much they loved her and how much they cared about her and all of these things. Well, while he's talking about this, I'm behind him, and I'm looking in the faces of the members of my choir. I see they're getting angrier by the moment, you know. They're feeling they're being insulted. So I'm saying, now, I want this man's talent, I want this man's service, and these people aren't going to be working with him if I don't find some way to clear this matter up. So, when he finished, I said, "You know, a great deal of time we injure each other by not understanding one another. " And I said, "I've watched this man, and I think he's a man of high character. And I don't think he intended to insult you. I think he just didn't know. Now our task is to try to inform him of what he was really looking at." I said, "Now he was looking at a black woman that he loved and [who] showed love to him. But what he fails to understand is that when she came home she told her children, 'I'm working like this so you won't have to take all this stuff. I'm taking it.' Because, in many instances, while she was loved, she was also considered a kind of nonperson, you know. She was of personal value in the sense of caring for the children, but beyond that she did not have a great deal of value for that family." And that was true in many instances.

As a result of that, he was very upset because I said it out before everybody. He felt that I should have said it to him personally. But I said, "You have said what you said, and the only way we were going to remedy this, reconcile this, [is for me] to say what I said, publicly. So I made that statement, not to embarrass you, but to try to see if we can't reconcile. So, I tell you what, maybe we're not ready to talk about our race relations here; maybe we'd better stay with music, and maybe another time we'll try to talk about our relationship with each other in terms of our diversity and racial identity."

But that was just a small incident of what can happen; what I see in Texas over against what I saw when I left Texas and went to Morehouse. Stopped in Montgomery and-this was in 1935-I felt a different kind of climate than I'd felt here. And, as a result of that, there was much more enthusiasm. I used to enjoy going to the Southeast because I saw the enthusiasm; I saw how minds were being lifted, how people saw the future; there was a brightness in it. They said, "We're going to get to this thing; we're moving this; we're changing; this society is changing." I didn't get that same kind of enthusiasm [here]. In addition to that, I saw greater evidence identified in the clothes that people wore in the Southeast over against what they were wearing here. When I let my hair grow out and was wearing what they called a "natural" then, which was different, which was an identity with what was going on during that period, I was exposed to some criticism, you know. Whereas everybody was doing it in those areas. They were all doing it.

I can understand that black and white relationships were different in the Deep South than they were further west, but why didn't black leaders like yourself join with leaders over there?

Well, many of them did. For an example, I was president of the Baptist Minister's Union. And when Martin Luther King's home was bombed in Montgomery, we took up money from our churches and sent it to him. We identified in that way, you see. The day that he had a march to Selma, I led a march from the Carver Cultural Center to the Alamo, and we knelt in prayer as a kind of identification with what was going on in Selma.

But now let me say this: the white leaders in San Antonio were much more willing to make concessions. I remember once I was asked, "How do you all radicalize these black folks so?" I said, "We don't radicalize them; you do." And this was shocking to him. He said, "What do you mean, we do?" I said, "Well, all we have to do is push him up against this wall where he thinks you're going to respond positively and you respond negatively, and if I keep pushing him, he's going to get angry and he's going to get radical. He's going to say, 'They're not going to change, so I'm going to move in on it.' You radicalize." I think whites in the Southeast radicalize blacks more in that area than they radicalize them here.

Now, East Texas [including Dallas] was a little different from San Antonio [and] South Texas. You had a buffer in South Texas; you had Hispanics; you had Mexican Americans. They served as a kind of buffer; you didn't have the large numbers of blacks pushed over against the whites. You had Hispanics as kind of in the middle there [both in terms of color and economics].

I would like to return to your early beliefs that World War II soldiers were going to be very instrumental. It was my impression that the movement was spearheaded more by students. It was more students on the front line than these returning soldiers. Was that true?

I think it was students. I think largely because they had the environment in which to be organized. Soldiers changed attitudes more than participated, and not only their attitude as a soldier, but the attitude of their families who had given them up into military activity. And they had been exposed to life and death events. I think families began to change. The climate began to change. And the attitude that we can't wait around here with this legal system; we've got to get this done. And what we've got to do is disrupt everything. We've got to disrupt things and, by so disrupting things, we can sit down and reach some kind of agreement. But it was a strategy of disruption. You put everything in jeopardy. And then you say, "Okay, let's put it back together again with a new set of rules."

This is why I say to youngsters now, that the changing environment of our community now means that the disruption level has been raised to such a height that the strategy of protest has to be well thought out. In other words, we could excite a community in those days just by marching en masse through town. Now, they put a group of policemen and march us on out [somewhere] and march us on back. [laughter] And nobody gets upset, you see? Nobody's upset about that. So you don't create any kind of disruption. So if you're going to have a protest now, the level of disruption has been raised to the level that you've got to almost be willing to put your life on the line. Now, some of the people did [give] their life, even in that disruption, but it's even more so now, I think. [The L.A. riots were an example.]

You can't go out playing, you know. They're not frightened by long beards and marching anymore. You've got to have much greater strategy. And this is why other groups that have accepted this strategy have run into a lot of violence and hostility. You know, the women and the gays, all of them have sort of adopted this strategy in terms of their own effort to bring about change. And I don't think it has been as successful with them as it was during Civil Rights because our society, like any others, soon adjusted itself to those conditions, and you have to then bring forth another strategy.

Tell me more about your role and the role of other ministers in the Civil Rights movement in Texas.

My role was one of working with the Baptist Minister's Union. I was president of that group during this period, and helping to rally behind, and helping them to give leadership to their people, and getting them to rally behind the things that we wanted changed here. And the patterns that were followed here, in terms of goals, were the patterns that were followed all over the country. One was access to public accommodations. That was central to our effort. So, we went before the City Council to get ordinances passed so that we would have access to swimming pools, parks. In the meantime, we supported that effort, in making the appeal before the City Council, by putting a picket line around City Hall during the times they were having meetings in City Hall, creating as much publicity around the issue as we could. It was an effort to bring about some dialogue, some understanding, and communicating our goals and objectives as the press picked up these things. In addition to that, we made an effort toward particular business enterprises. We put a picket line around Joske's and stood in the doorway of one of the restaurants in Joske's that did not serve [blacks]. Some individuals were arrested on that. In addition to that, we stood in the line of the Majestic Theater, opening the doors of that. We also worked in protesting the slow movement of the city public school system-San Antonio Independent School District-in its integration of blacks into the school system. We also put picket lines around the big stores in town that did not use, did not have, black checkers-stores like Handy Andy, the big chain grocery stores. These were ways in which we protested it. Every occasion that we had to address an issue, we would go to City Council on it. Police brutality-we would go to City Council.

Tell me about police brutality here in San Antonio.

Here in San Antonio we had a young man-that was one of the outstanding cases here-that was arrested and died, if I can remember. I'm trying to think of his name because it was carried in the local papers, and we protested the result of that event as excessive force on the part of police.

In addition to that, [the] guilty parties in police brutality here in San Antonio were largely those persons, those policemen, that served on the vice squad during those years. Now, vice squads were not always free of vice, because they dealt with people who were doing things illegally, you see. And when you're dealing with that kind of thing, if you're not careful, you begin to take on some of the things that are going on. And I had been told by some people who were active that they'd paid off people and then the policemen would come back and beat them and whip them about something. They were tired of paying and getting whipped, too.

And then I was told by women who had been carried to the police station in their [night]gowns, and this kind of thing. And so, we would protest this. In addition to that, we were asking for a police review board, and that's where we got the greatest amount of hostility. A police review board that would examine cases that were brought to us. I remember once I went to the City Council after being visited by a number of women who were in the housing projects, who'd told me they'd been arrested and carried to jail in their gowns without being able to get decent. And so, I went, alone really, to the City Council and called for the Council to investigate. I asked them to appoint a committee to investigate this, these incidents. They said, "Well, who were the people that made the charges?" I said, "I'm not going to give the names of the individuals, in open council, that brought these charges to me." I said, "But I will sit down with a committee that you appoint and name those persons. But I'm not going to give you an opportunity to have those policemen take advantage of those individuals because I named them in open council." The next day, I think it was, it's one of the few real negative editorials I ever got. They said I was using up the valuable time of the City Council; I was a rabble-rouser, troublemaker, called me all kinds of names. And that couldn't be tolerated, you know. Now, in those days, the first line of the establishment's defense was the police. There is much more leniency in criticizing the police today than there was in those days. You just weren't permitted to criticize the police. Anybody that criticized the police was really out of line. But today you hear critics from many areas, you know. And I think in a society as chaotic as ours is, it might be well that we maintain a way of examining the action of policemen. Not because they're worse than anybody, but because they're not any better than anybody else.

In those times of confrontation, did violence threaten to erupt?

Let me tell you about a meeting that I made during that period. It was held at the Cameo Theater. The Cameo Theater is still on Commerce. Every evening the group was gathering at the Cameo Theater, and they were blasting everybody. And they were angry. They had built HemisFair. And as you know, HemisFair, when it was originally built, blocked the Eastside. You had to come all the way around to Alamo to get into HemisFair. It was just like they'd put that back against the Eastside. But the Eastside was having problems with the building of the HemisFair, primarily because they saw it as taking money away from areas of need that had long been neglected in the black community. So there was hostility toward the HemisFair. Well, they were gathering; they were mad; they were arguing about it; said we need to take to the street. And persons were even saying we need to burn this town down, you know, because there was a lot of burning going on in Detroit and Los Angeles in those days.

And I came to that meeting one evening. I had been coming to it, but I could tell it was getting increasingly more militant, greater rise of desire to take to the streets and really bring about some riotous conditions. So one evening I was going down there, and I started thinking about it. Now, do you really want to get involved in this, because this thing is really moving toward a lot of violence? So I said, "Well, let me see. I don't want to stay away"-I had a certain amount of pride-"I don't want to stay away because I'm afraid, you know. And I have been at the heart of this thing. I can't withdraw at a level at this time." So I went. I rode around it before.I wanted to see what was gathered. I rode around it, and, by going on the back streets around it, I looked and saw all these police cars parked in the shadows, parked in the darkness around the Cameo. And when I walked in there, came in there, the fellows were talking, and I was still thinking about all these police cars around. So finally one fellow got up and said, "Well, I'm tired of just talking. We just come here every night-talk, talk, talk, talk. Nobody wants to do anything. Well, I'm ready. If you're ready, come and follow me."

So I got up and asked for the floor, and I made a statement. Said, "Let me tell you a story." I said, "Two men were standing beside a railroad track, and they watched a big bull standing in the middle of the track with the train coming. The train was blowing smoke and chugging and moving. The bull was standing in the middle of that track, pawing and hooking his horns and snorting and going on and digging into the gravel with his paws. This train was coming, and finally the train hit the bull and broke his neck and knocked him off the track. One of them turned to the other one and said, 'Man, did you see that bull?' Said, 'Didn't that bull have a lot of courage? Did you watch that bull, how he stood up against that train?' Said, 'Didn't he have a lot of courage?' And the other fellow said, 'Yeah, he had a lot of courage, but his judgment was poor.'" [laughter] So I said, "Now listen, there are a lot of policemen around this place; what you got-sticks? rocks?" I said, "It's one thing to have a lot of courage, but it's also another thing to have good judgment. Don't let bad judgment get us killed out here. And we'll win nothing." I think that turned them around.

For a very strange reason.I did not know it, but the Chief of Police walked up to me long after that and expressed thanks for what I was doing, and I didn't even know he knew it. But I think we would have had a lot of blood, a lot of trouble that night if they'd gone out on the street. I don't think we would have accomplished any more. I think youngsters would have been killed. Lives would have been ruined by having to go to jail and from there maybe to the penitentiary. I don't think we would have accomplished any more. Now, I do think that the riot in Birmingham changed San Antonio. After that riot, the mayor of this city appointed a Committee for Volunteer Integration, in which he called upon the clergy and members of the Council of Churches at that time. I think he had an interracial committee.

Now, you may find this interesting. I was a part of a group that opposed that. There were several of us who opposed it. I did not participate with the integrated volunteers. It might seem strange, because I had been, we had been, on the edge of seeking integration. Why would we then oppose voluntary integration? We were fearful that they would use voluntary integration to not make integration legal. And we did not want anything in the way. I remember addressing the Council, and I said, "I don't want to be out there at your permission. I want to be there because I'm a citizen. I have a right to be there. Because if I'm there at your permission, you can also withdraw your permission." There were even blacks who did not understand why we were fighting what appeared to be a very good intention.

Now the thing that made that change, though, was the economics. There was not a change that came out of the moral commitment of this community. That was a change that came out of the economics of this community. We [the military bases] were then, at that time, training soldiers from a variety of dark-hued [nations]. Now, you can have a man who'll be my color going into a place where blacks are forbidden, and they would not have known whether he was American black or what he was. And we knew that the government was not going to stand for that. If we started giving problems to those people that had been assigned here by their various governments, and our government started having problems with those, then they were going to cut those people out. But it was an economic advantage to have them here. And therefore they sold that to the restaurants in the city until they got open because it's economically to our advantage to be open.

Did the military presence have any other impact? I assume the soldiers really didn't get involved with a lot of the movement.

No, they didn't get involved in a lot of the movement. But they were indirectly involved because they brought money. They brought money into this community. And, during that period, we did not have the same kind of diversity even in our industry. You know, we didn't have the kind of people coming here as visitors. [Or] the kind of trade, the kind of activity we have from outside the city. Our real central economic base was those military installations.

So you think that was much more effective, just by being there, than the pickets around Joske's?

I think that the pickets around Joske's raised the danger, created the potential for social disruption. And any city that had social disruption paid for it economically. Way back in Little Rock when they had to bring in soldiers, when they were integrating the schools, it had a devastating effect. No industry wanted to come to the city where there is social unrest. Even today, in the early experiences of the COPS organization, one of the concerns for the economic development group in this community was to be sure that they don't create any kind of social disruption. Because industry does not want to go where people are unhappy about their living relationships. So, the threat of that was vital.

I remember a very conservative minister, who possibly was not in agreement with a lot of my activity and my being outspoken, got upset about some incident that occurred. And I don't remember exactly what the incident was. But he met with the group, with the mayor. And he turned to the mayor and said, "Now, Mr. Mayor, we've got to come to grips with the justice of these things, because our young people don't have to have guns, rifles, and things." And he pulled out a match; "All they have to do is have a match." Well, that was a dramatic [laughter] expression coming from a conservative minister in the city, speaking to the mayor. This was Dr. Pierce Wilkinson. "All they have to have is a match." Now, the realization, then, that the threat to the city had been reduced to a match, I think, caused a lot of people to begin to think clearly and begin to say we've got to make some changes in this.

Can you characterize and name the group that was meeting at the Cameo Theater?

It was called the Ghetto Improvement Association. The membership was really a broad-based membership. It was made up of a lot of street people. And I say that not trying to degrade them, but I'm simply saying that many of those folks that I remember seeing there were people that sort of hung around on the street.

Didn't have as much to lose?

No. And during that period I had been able to maintain a good relationship with many of the guys who were leaders in the movement, primarily, I guess, out of my interest and also because this was home and I knew some of the guys, had known them for years, you know, even before I became the pastor of this church. But by being pastor of the church and then being acquainted with them, it put us in a different kind of relationship. But I knew them. Many of them had menial jobs. There were not a lot of professional people involved in that. You have to realize that in San Antonio professionals had something at stake in the system. And they were not as apt to get into the arena of what might be designated as the radicals, you know. And I always felt that I was fortunate that I could get involved in those things because I didn't have to look to anybody for my salary but black people, you know. I felt I was there to express basics: the things that they felt but did not feel that they could express.

Whatever happened to the Ghetto Improvement Organization? Was that the end of it when you helped turn them away?

No, it continued, but I was not as closely associated with the Ghetto Improvement Organization after we sort of passed through that period of real threat.

Did the threat of social disruption, which might have included violence, change the way whites dealt with the situation?

No, no. See, what you've got to recognize, that in many instances there was an underestimation of the way blacks felt. Even in the Deep South, I remember reading where blacks were throwing rocks at some whites, and a white woman was in the crowd and said, "I never thought they felt like that about us." There's been, always, an underestimation of [how] people have felt-that "you were happy with this," you know, "everything was all right." I remember a man called me one night. I had been down to City Hall, and he said, "Listen, Black, you're down there raising all that sand in City Hall about these things, and I have two people working for me, and they say they're happy. They're satisfied with things as they are." I said, "Listen, I'm going to ask you something. If you had a choice between a Posturepedic mattress or a mattress stuffed with cornshucks, which one would you choose?" He said, "Well, I'd choose the Posturepedic." I said, "Do you think you'd do that because you're white? You'd do that because you're human." I said, "Now if your people tell you they're happy with less than the best, you'd better watch them, because that's not human. Everybody, no matter who it is, wants the best. He takes and embraces the best that he can afford. He may not say anything." And I said, "It's dangerous to have a man who's telling you he's satisfied with less than the best because he's out to get you, somewhere, because we all like the best. And that's what I'm down there about. I'm about trying to improve circumstances and conditions that people have to encounter because of their race."

Did you convince him?

I don't know whether I convinced him or not.

Can you characterize the different factions and leadership in the '50s and '60s?

The NAACP was one area of leadership. CORE had created an office here, as well. And then you had the Baptist Minister's Union, which was another area of leadership. Those were the three basic organizations during that period. You didn't develop a strong student movement here, I think because you didn't have a lot of leadership for students. Much of my leadership, as I remember it then, was particularly related to ministers and the NAACP. I don't know why you didn't have a strong student movement here.

I guess there weren't that many black students. What about the NAACP Youth Councils? Bill Donohue?

They were very active. Bill was a member of my church then.

Who made up the rank and file of those who could be counted on to go on the picket lines?

It was church people.

Was there cooperation between CORE and the NAACP and your ministers?

Yes, they had meetings between them. I think also what helped, they were critical of each other, too. CORE was considered more radical. NAACP was more traditional; they had followed the legal way; its membership was more professional. By that I mean, the people who belonged to it were the people who were teachers, that bracket, more professionals. And you had some support from them, but you didn't have a lot of participation, you know, because they had their jobs at stake.

The NAACP appeared to be strong in the '50s, but by the '60s it didn't have as much power.

I think because of the method. See, you had a lot of people really ready to use the legal approach, political approach, to it, to resolve an issue. But you didn't have many people wanting to get on the street, in the street and protest. And so, CORE and Martin Luther King's movement had to draw from another segment, although the churches were made available to them, you know. And they used a lot of schoolchildren in the Southeast. Didn't use a lot of them here.

Tell me more about CORE and what they were trying to accomplish. Who was involved?

I can't recall the issues around which they had most of their leadership involved. You might have to get that from somebody else. I would not want to give the wrong impression of them. But I remember when they had an office in the Commerce Street area.

And then I guess you had blacks who were, say, members of the Good Government League who were more moderate?

They were moderate. And may I say this of them: they were individuals who believed that you could only make change by joining the system. And that was the debate among many leaders throughout the country, that you can make the change if you join the leadership. I remember I was invited to become a member when the Good Government League was organized. And they were talking about selecting candidates. I raised the question, "What's the process for evaluating candidates?" They said, "Oh, we'll just, you know, pick some good men." Well, my observation was that good men were not always integrationists, from their perspective. I knew that the governor of the state was running as a segregationist. So I was not going to tie myself to an organization that I could not predict what they would do in the selection of a candidate. So I withdrew. Now, the people who stayed with it were people who were willing to run the risk of finding themselves supporting persons who could have been advocates of segregation. And that's where they got their reputation, you know, of being Uncle Toms.

As I understand it, there were at least three movements to work on city ordinances in San Antonio in '54, '56, and the '60s. Why was the process taking so long and did the strategy change over that ten-year period or so?

I don't remember the procession of events. I only know that we had the intervening effort of voluntary [integration]. And we had the school decision. I think one of the first things that the council did was pass an ordinance on housing. It did something about housing, I can remember, because at that time the Reverend Samuel James was on the City Council, and he was behind that action. Here, again, it was economics, you know. The government was making requirements that you had to have open housing if you were going to get that federal money.

Did blacks begin moving out of the Eastside?

You had blacks moving out of the Eastside. And it was-I think it was-the real estate people handled that, you know, carefully. Because if they could get one or two persons into that area, you know, I think they had it made, you see, in terms of federal money. They could say it was integrated.

So there wasn't, you know, like the house bombings in Dallas?

No, they didn't have that here.

Did many blacks move from the Eastside?

It was a gradual thing. Now here's what happened, I think, more than anything else. When [black] military guys retired here, they bought homes in white areas because the amenities were better and the banks would finance. See, they had the benefits in that too. The banks were not anxious to finance a whole lot of houses in areas where you had nothing but blacks, because if the person lost it, lost the house, the market for that house had been greatly reduced. But if you bought a house in the predominantly white [area] and he lost it, he still had possibly a white customer, you see. Sometimes I don't really know whether we realize how much economics is tied into racism.

I think public accommodations and school desegregation were pretty straightforward. What kinds of things were being done to address the economic issues?

Well, coming out of segregation, segregation had its own economy. By that, you had black jobs; you had jobs that white folk didn't want. Now what integration has done, really, is remove that barrier. Now those jobs are open for grabs. I can remember when in the hotels, all the hotels had black waiters. They had black [bellboys] bring in the bags and all. All the hotels had them; there were no white guys doing that. Now that job is free for all. Everybody is trying get it, you know. A number of the janitorial jobs, you know, it's open for everybody. Now, you know integration killed a lot of restaurants, black restaurants. Because people could go other places.

Which personal and culturally controlled businesses survived?

I guess the black businesses that survived were funeral parlors, barbershops, and churches. Not many more than that. I mean, white barbers have problems cutting black folks' hair. For many years white funeral homes would not bury black people, so you've got an overriding custom. Now I think that industry is under attack, if you put it that way, from white businesses. I think, increasingly, white funeral parlors are prepared to bury anybody because they're becoming less personal family businesses and more like chains with managers. And those managers have an obligation to make a profit, and they're not going to let racial identity stand in the way of their making a profit.

In your view, a lot of San Antonio black businesses went under as a result of the Civil Rights movement?

I think they did. Surely did. Black drugstores went under.

I noticed that you have your own credit union.

What we did behind the development of that credit union was the idea that blacks were being exploited by loan sharks because the larger banks did not create a climate in which many blacks felt comfortable. You know, coming in a segregated city and you come into a great big bank, like the Alamo National Bank used to be; walk in there, who do I talk to? How can I possibly talk to him about a $150 loan? We saw this was happening to a number of families. They were getting deeper in the hole, many of them, because they borrowed from one to pay the other one. And they were charging terrible interest rates, and it was just a disadvantage. So we set out to create a credit union.

Now, the interesting thing about the creation of this credit union [was that] a great deal of the interest, my interest, in trying to organize it here, came out of a officer who was a member of the telephone company. And he had been able to participate in a credit union by being employed by the telephone company. So we said, well, we've got to have one here. We set out to do it. And we were able to do that.

Now, the fact of the economics was that we were able to deal with two angles of it: helping families to save, encouraging them to save; and also handling loans, which were two very productive things for families who were members of the church because the charter limited the field of service. You could only serve a certain limited field, but we've been very successful at it.

When did you establish it?

It's been over twenty-five years ago. We have a million dollars in assets that just grew up out of this membership. I'm sure we buy most of the cars of our members. Funds are drawn from parents sending their schoolchildren to school.

What happened? It's so important to the Civil Rights movement, to ultimate success. Why haven't others started credit unions?

We're in the process of developing skills, and I think you're going to see some changes in the economic development-direction, rather-of the African-American community as a result of participation in the larger community and the development of skills that come out of the larger community.

I find some of the best-informed men I have in this church, in the business area, are men who came out of the military, because they had jobs in the military that required skills, and they were trained while they were in the military in those skills that they are now translating in terms of business here.

So it's taken that long?

That's right. Now, you have two different points of view that's rising that I see on the horizon among African Americans. One is that we lost so much in integration, let's draw back, let's do our own thing. So you have those individuals who want to come back into a kind of segregated activity. Do your thing in terms of black community, and let's recover, because we have lost business. As I said, it's true.

What else have you lost?

We have lost a supporting relationship. For an example, our kids who go to school in the public schools are puzzles to many white teachers, only because they are not able to identify with the cultural circumstances under which that child is growing. Now, in some instances, the kids use their ignorance against them, against themselves and the teacher, to get out of doing some certain thing. And the teacher who's most compassionate is saying, "That poor little black boy; I'm going to let him get by with this." Whereas a black teacher would say, "Come here, son... I know what you're pulling. If you don't get back there [laughter] and get that work done, I'm going to do certain things to you," you see. Whereas the white teacher has a problem dealing with that. So we lost that kind of identity that pulled you over those youthful irresponsible periods that all of us experience at some time or another. See, I had teachers at Douglass that knew my parents in the grocery stores, and, you know, for them to call me up and say, "I'm going to tell your momma," was devastating. I always sought to escape that. So I'm simply saying that we lost that support community because we lost that understanding. I'm not saying the white teachers are mean or anything, or even that they are still driven by racism. Those who are not driven by racism still have the problem of understanding. Separation leads to a lack of understanding. And so we lost that.

I think, though, the gains were far greater than the losses. We've just got to deal with the losses. Now, the only way I see that you deal with the losses that came with integration is the way you deal with pregnancy. There's no way to stop it. You go through with it. You've got to go all the way until it becomes a person, until it becomes a child. You cannot say, "Well, we've dealt with it politically; we have access to the institutions now." No, you've got to go further; you've got to move, move. You've got to move economically; you're going to develop. Maybe you have to stand still for a while until you get all of your stuff together, all of your skills together. But you don't stand still to be isolated. You stand still in order to move beyond that. No, we can't be half-integrated. You've got to be totally integrated.

Would you agree that social organizations are divided racially?

Yes, because we have deep cultural commitments. For an example, we had a nutrition program with this church, in which I would say that 40% of them were Hispanics, about 10% were white, the rest of them black. I faced the problem of how do you provide a program with that cultural diversity? If you played black music, Hispanics are not relating to that. You play Hispanic music, blacks and maybe some whites are not relating to it. You've got deep cultural differences that you've got to override.

Now, it might be that we're going to have to develop a pattern of integration that does not destroy cultural identity. I don't know what that pattern is going to be like, because separation tends to create hostility. I don't know whether the Jewish community would accept this, but I believe their trouble through many generations has been the product of the fact that they could be easily identified. It's regrettable that that kind of "sense of oneness" becomes a problem when other people confront it. But it seems to me it does. I think that we're going to have to work through that.

I don't understand the fighting that's going on there in Bosnia, see, because I've been able to identify the hostility that I face in terms of colors. But I look at [laughter] any man and the victim, and all of them look alike to me. What're they fighting about, you know? They said, "Ethnic purity." What does that mean? Evidently, one group has some identity that they want to keep that may not be established in color of skin; may be established in the way you rear your family, the kind of values you have. And that means separation.

But as long, in my opinion, as people have some minor significant basis upon which they separate from other people and cannot appreciate them, you always have the threat of hostility and violence.

But we've got to find a way of.how do we maintain our cultural identity, and at the same time, how do we grow roses and violets in the same garden and not have one kill the other?

Where do we go from here? Where are you leading your congregation? Should there be another Civil Rights movement?

I'm telling my kids they've got to prepare for total integration. That means you've got to know where you're going [and] what it takes to get there. And you cannot waste any time; things are moving rapidly. You can no longer wait until you are an adult to decide it. You've got to decide now, while you're youngsters. Because what it will take to equip you requires that amount of time. You can't be equipped to do what you have to do and be identified with the larger community without it. Because I have already come from out of the past; I don't want that anymore. I don't want to see my youngsters in there. It's got to be better. That is more consistent with my point of view as a minister. I don't think God intended that in our diversity we would be hostile toward one another and that we would not have the ability to share the common blessings that all belong to him anyway. I just don't think that was his intention.

I remember once I went into City Hall, and we were talking about public accommodations, and they had just turned us down flat to the point that I ended up by telling them, "Let the record show that we did not give it to you. We did not give our rights to you. I want my grandchildren to know that I did not give my rights to you. You took them. I want that on the record." But that was the kind of spirit I was in when I left. And my friend turned to me, and he said, "Black, they will never change. They will never change." I said, "You're right, they'll never change." Then I came back to this office. (My office was not here; it was in the building across.) And I sat down, and I began to think about what I'd said, and I said to myself, "If they will never change, why am I preaching this Book [referring to the Bible]? If there are never going to be any changes, then why don't I just close this up, go to my pulpit Sunday and resign and tell them that this don't make sense. It's not going to ever happen, and therefore I'm giving it all up." And I said, "I can't do that because I believe this Book. I believe there is change; that change is possible. You've got to continue to work at it. It's not easy, but it's possible."

We are so complex in our interest. We have so many self-interests. You know, I hear us talking about "national self-interest," and I said that's a terrible doctrine for our foreign policy-national self-interest. Somewhere we've got to get beyond that. If we're not careful, self-interest takes over everything. But somewhere that self has to include the neighbor, has to be inclusive of that neighbor. Otherwise, there's no real hope for us. We've got to have a kind of support system that disregards culture, economics, race, and only affirms our humanity.

The notion of not acting in your own self-interest doesn't mean that your church in a generation won't be there anymore as it is, right?

I think my church ought not be what it is now. If it lays any claim on that gospel, it ought to be a different kind of church from what it is.

What should it be?

It should be a church that has a capacity to minister to people without regard to their ethnic background. And this is why I said "has the capacity." Now, there's a difference in being available and having the capacity. There are many institutions that make themselves available to all people but don't have the capacity to serve all people because they are not sensitive. They haven't developed the skills and the sensitivity that all people might bring to them, to that particular institution, you see?

Is that another way of saying we haven't come very far from your childhood with a notion of whites over here that's not based on knowing individuals. Do you think we have?

I think we've made some progress. I think, though, that we've got to recognize that progress is not a permanent structure. Progress with human beings has its variables. It's like a marriage. The excitement and the love that gets it started goes, and fifteen years down the line it might require a lot of adjustment, understanding. We might even revert to where we were before we even met the person; we were indifferent, you know. So the fact that I see racial hatred now cropping up, I know that's a human factor. But we can keep the structures moving in the line of recognizing the significance of a work, of our relationship with one another. These will be sideshows. The main show will be people working with people. And we will develop a support system that has meaning. But you can't eliminate the human factor. Just like there's no guarantee that people are going to love each other after they've been married fifty years because they seem so excited when they marry. Conditions, circumstances change, people grow in different directions; they begin to see things different, and they have different ways of looking at things.

Our society is like that, and we can get very discouraged. When I read the stories, the things that are happening in Germany [white supremacists], some of the attitudes that you see happening in New York that was once regarded as a haven where blacks retreat from racism, you see.

Now, that does not dictate the fact that your structures and your organizations and your opportunities for remedy are not there. I do not dismiss the idea that maybe your sitting here talking with me might not be a product of integration, you see. And not that you would not want to talk with me, but you wouldn't. This would not be of interest.

[Before] it would not have been of interest to you. So, on the one hand, while you have recurring events of racial hostility, you also have in very subtle and many times unnoticed ways people drawing closer together, understanding one another better, children growing up with a better perspective of what diversity in culture means and what it means globally.

The great thing that has happened in America (I heard a man speak on this and I agree with him so much) is that we've got the laboratory for the world's problems. There is no place in the world where you have the diversity and the need to create structures out of that diversity like you have [here]. Japan still suffers from a kind of limited understanding of diversity. I do not know what my fate would be if the Japanese became world powers and dominated the world. They would have a long way to go, to grow. And I'm not saying they are innately racists. I'm simply saying they have had a limited experience; they've been working with monotone; they don't know what harmony is. Yet, they may know what harmony is within a given set of keys, you know. They're not playing the whole keyboard; we're playing the whole keyboard.

And trying to play everybody else's. [laughter]

That's right. And so [what] we bring to the world [is] unique, and, in a very significant way, God is preparing us for that kind of leadership. Maybe that is the uniqueness. You know, we talked about the uniqueness of Martin Luther King having been in a place at a particular time under particular circumstances. Maybe America is [unique] because we're becoming global more and more. We can't even operate our cars without being impacted by the global market. We're global in, oh, so many ways, so many ways. And we increasingly become global. Things that happen in South Africa ultimately affect us here. So I think there's no other way to go. Okay, you're in school, make it an opportunity to develop every skill you can that integrates you into the larger society. There's no longer (even I say this to young men who want to go into business) a black capitalism; you can't build on that; you've got to build a business that's everybody's business. That's the challenge. And that's not easy. It's not easy. It's not easy to overcome the cultural bias, the racial biases that are there-they are there.

Now, I think in some ways economic integration is going to be as difficult or harder in many ways than political integration. And that's all we've had-political integration. We've not had economic integration. And I think there are flickering lights of social integration in the midst of the political integration, but social integration is not a gift of economic and political integration. It does not come [as a result of economic or political integration] because it's personal. I accept [that] my social life is a personal decision and should always be. It shouldn't be structured politically or economically. It should be structured because I chose to be integrated socially.

But now economic and political integration has to be forced, in a sense, because it's survival; these are survival issues. Social integration is not necessarily a survival issue, at this point of my understanding, you know. Maybe our social integration is far more important than I think it is. I don't know.

Looking back on the Civil Rights movement in the '50s and '60s, do you think you went about it the right way or that blacks did?

I think we had excessive expectations. And some of the frustrations of the youngsters now are products of expectations denied or deferred. And they are frustrated by the fact that they, as they entered into an integrated society, ran into barriers, and they found they were not accepted. See, when I ran into those barriers, I was prepared for them. My parents prepared me for them. You know, as soon as I hit land here, they got me ready. We have not prepared our kids for that, you know. When I talk to some of my youngsters about what was going on during the segregation period, they think I'm making it up. Couldn't have been like that. They just can't imagine it being like that, because all of their experiences have been altogether different. And I think that we did not have our hand on what we could expect once we received the legal, or the political, right of integration. We thought from then on it would all be smooth.

And that's where, I think, in terms of our leadership (that period where we were critically shortsighted), we've got to now recover and begin to once again identify what real expectations ought to be.

Seems almost like you're suggesting maybe we're moving as fast as we can move.

In some areas we are [making progress]. Some areas we are because of the necessity for human change. I'm sure that there were people who thought when they integrated their restaurant, the next morning they were going to have a carload of black folk running to get in there. That has never been true. It's like a story I always heard of a tiger that was in a cage, and every day he would walk six feet that way, turn and walk six feet that way, turn and walk six feet that way, turn and walk six feet that way in that cage. So one day they took the cage off of him, and he was still walking-six feet that way, six feet that way, six feet that way, six feet that way. In other words, when you have shaped the disposition and attitude of people over hundreds of years, they don't jump up and grab it the next day simply because it's open to them. We have a generation of youngsters that are certainly reflecting the fact that they grew up in the integrated community, you know. This is disturbing some of our older people because they don't have the loyalty to the same institutions that those of us who are older had to those institutions. They don't necessarily call the black funeral director [because] their grandmother was buried by that funeral home. They say now, "Let's see, what does so and so bury us for? And what does it cost to bury here?" They're looking at prices, you see. They're not bound by the traditional values that were part of the segregated community. They are reaching; they have other standards. And we've got to come-the older community has to come to terms with that.

Some people think that's a loss.

In some instances the jury is still out on that, you know, as to whether or not that change was for the best, that maybe there were some values worth holding on to that were discovered in the segregated community that we need to examine. And not necessarily to keep them in the segregated [community], but to share them, share those values.

What kinds of things were you preaching from the pulpit during the '50s and '60s? Did you deal with an issue like this?

[Preaching] was more, more prophetic-the messages of the prophets, identifying with the struggle of Israel. Those were the kinds of messages. I used to wonder, what was the white preacher preaching? [laughter] Because so much of the prophetic messages could be identified. We could identify with them, until I used to wonder what in the world is he talking about. Because it's like here are all these prophets dealing exactly with what we're struggling with. And I guess it was out of that historic experience you developed theology. So you began then to put it down in some organized form. I don't know if you've read any books on black theology.

No, I haven't.

[The last name of one of the leaders] is Cone, and he introduced the concept of black theology, and it is the product of the way in which the black man sees God and his relationship to the scriptures, the way the scripture describes God. And, of course, he points out that European theology looked at it from the perspective of a master, whereas the black theology looks at it from the perspective of a servant.

And that makes some difference in the way he sees it. And much of that was done before they ever wrote black theology, talked about black theology, black preachers were preaching that. [laughter] They were bringing Daniel out of the lion's den a long time, in terms of black people identifying Daniel's problems with the black community's problems and God delivering them out of the lion's den, this kind of thing.

I understand that the Methodist Church in San Antonio was hurt by desegregation when they lost the central district, which was predominantly black. How was the Baptist church experience different?

I don't know that that's true. I imagine one of the things. for example, you had Bishop Dixon who grew up in this community. I remember him when he was growing up in this community and became the Bishop of this Diocese. I [don't know whether it has created] problems with the Methodist ministry; it has created a problem in the terms of his movement, you know. Although I guess he still has the black congregations to move to, but I don't know how many of the white churches are prepared to accept assignments of black ministers. But I think even that will eventually fall away because we're acting out of a lot of myths, as well as some real differences-but a lot of myths.

I remember we had a very fine man join my church-a white fellow who joined my church a number of years ago-and, as he worked in the church, I never felt that he joined the church to prove anything. You know, sometimes people join things to show they're liberal. And I was very pleased with the fact that he never seemed to be trying to prove anything. He just was his own person. You received him as he is; he received you as you were; and I appreciated that. So I asked him one day, "How do your friends take the fact that you are a member of a black church?" He said, "Well, they commend me for coming over and helping you all."

I said, "They could never accept the idea that you might be receiving some help from us." It was interesting to me to hear him say that because I think that idea is supported by a lot of things, you know. It's not unusual for them to say that, because if you view the black man as always in an inferior position, why wouldn't you think that you came over to help him? So, that is the reason you have blacks who protest the art forms, the TV shows, because it affects the attitude, [the] disposition of whites in general in the way in which they perceive blacks.

I remember once I preached a sermon that was fairly well prepared; maybe it was unlike some of my other sermons I preached. [laughter] But this time it was, and a white person heard it. And she called me and asked me, "How do your people accept your preaching?" And then I had to give her a lecture on the diversity of the black community. I said, "All black preachers don't preach like I do, like all white preachers don't necessarily preach like your minister preaches. You've got diversity in the black community. People I preach to accept the way I preach and what I have to say. I'm sure there are other people in the community that would not be happy, and the only thing I would like for you to understand, that you can at least accept that diversity and not put all black people in the same box simply because they are black."

There is great diversity. There are days when I think I have more diversity in my church than First Baptist has in theirs because of the varied backgrounds of the members of the church. Now you have such variation in economic and educational opportunities. Whereas there is a kind of union, oneness, that comes out of the white community in terms of economics and training.

When blacks move out of the Eastside, they continue to come back to your church.

They've built a support community around other black people that attend the same church. I don't know how long that's going to last, though, when I recognize black people attending white churches. They can relate to the kind of worship that goes on in that church; they might find it difficult to relate to the worship that goes on in the average black church, you know. So they may not feel as comfortable in the church of their fathers' house as they feel in the church of their masters' house, because they can identify better.

You know, you grow up in a certain way. For example, I went to New England, and I saw them put milk and sugar on rice, and I'd come out of Texas [laughter]; you don't put milk and sugar on rice; you put gravy [laughter] on rice. So I was looking at all of that. I said, "That's terrible," but the difference was the background. We'd come out of different areas in which the manner in which we ate rice [differed]. Now I can eat rice both ways. Don't have any problem. I remember the first time I had [what] was called "Welsh rabbit." Said, "We're going to have Welsh rabbit today," and here comes this toast [laughter] with cheese. Rabbit? [laughter] I thought we were going to have some meat here. You see, just diversity.

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