In 1965 when I was studying Humanities at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Martin Luther King came to speak to the student body. The civil rights movement was then at its height in the southern United States. There was not a room big enough to hold the student crowd, so King spoke to thousands of students in an open air meeting.
At the end of his talk King made a call for volunteers to go to work in the south, doing civil rights activities. About 25 of us responded. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded by Martin Luther King, was a non violent movement. We volunteers received two days of training in non violent resistance methods. We were told that if attacked we should not fight back, but instead we should adopt a non violent position. In the worst case scenario, we were to curl up and take up a fetal position and refuse to fight back.
Our group of volunteers went to Georgia to work in the towns of Macon and Americus. In Americus there was an all white Baptist church. Interestingly, about 40 miles down the road in Plains Georgia, there was another Baptist church where Jimmy Carter was a member. That Baptist church was totally integrated – quite the opposite to the one in Americus.
One Sunday, a mixed group of us, three blacks and three whites, tried to enter the Americus Baptist church to worship. John Lewis who is now a US congressman, was the leader of our group. After a discussion at the church entrance, we were put in prison. We were charged with (1) disturbing divine worship and (2) trespassing on private property. The prison was totally segregated so myself and a fellow volunteer were put in in a cell with two other white men. We soon discovered that they were aggressive racists and they soon discovered that we were civil rights workers, living and working with the local black community. They threatened that that night we were going to get the beating of our lives.
As I pondered this, I was trying to figure out how the non violent peaceful position would work in this situation. It was a pretty frightening prospect. However, just before nighttime, another of our comrades was put in the cell with us. He was a very big guy – football player material. It was now three of us and two of them. Nothing happened that night.
However, in Macon another incident occurred that would give me a chance to put this non violent training into practice. In Macon there was a “drive in restaurant” located on an interstate road. The black community lived right next to it but no black person had ever entered this restaurant, because it was an ‘all-white restaurant’. Given that the recently passed Civil Rights Act (1964) said that all public institutions should be open to all races, this restaurant was in violation of Federal Law.
One night, Patricia, the black daughter of the family with whom we were staying, Elaine, a Jewish volunteer and my wife Fran and I decided to enter this restaurant. Most of the restaurant was for drive in cars (just like a drive-in theater), but one could also enter into the main restaurant building. We entered and sat down. At first they refused to serve us. Finally, they served only Patricia and said,” There, we have now satisfied the law”.
When we left the restaurant, we noticed that three of the tires on our VW Beetle car were completely flat. I went to a nearby phone booth to call for help from the black community. Before I could make my call, I was pulled out of the telephone booth and my beating began. As I was being punched and kicked I went into my defensive fetal position. Amazingly it worked! The beating stopped.
While this was going on, Fran was shouting for help from all of the nearby parked cars. Everyone ignored her. Patricia ran across the road and telephoned for help. Soon members of the local black community arrived. So did the local police.
“What is the problem here?” asked the police officer.
“I was beaten while trying to make a phone call” I said.
“And would you like to press charges?”
Now, I was recent graduate from seminary, so like a good Christian, I said, “Oh no, I forgive this man for what he has done to me.”
At this point, members of the local black community spoke up, “No you don’t. You must press charges or else this will happen again. “
So I pressed charges and a trial was set for the next morning.
The trail was a simple affair. There was only one judge presiding. Elaine gave a solid account as a witness. Then the judge asked,
“Where are you people from, anyway?”
I was a Canadian, but I was in the USA for so long, and had an American wife, so I could say along with the others,
“We are all from Los Angeles.”
Now it so happened that on the previous night there had been serious race riots in the Watts suburb of Los Angeles, so the judge said,
“Why didn’t you just stay in Los Angeles? Why did you come down here to stir up trouble?”
I really did not have a good answer to this.
Finally, the judge just threw the whole case out, and told us all to behave better.
The story did not quite end there. That night, the Macon black community met in a local church to discuss follow up strategies. They decided to all get in their cars and park in all the parking places in this “drive-in restaurant”. They then ordered one serving of chips for each car, and remained there for two hours. This was an example of an economic boycott – a peaceful, non violent action that eventually proved very successful throughout the southern US in those days of turbulent change.
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