July 23.
This portion of our journey begins a historic civil rights tour. We joined in the worship service at Woodworth Chapel at Tougaloo College. I happened to get there about half an hour early. Our group, as a whole, often operates on a last minute basis which I don’t like that much. On top of that, I heard the start time incorrectly. I thought the worship service was at 9:00 instead of 9:30, so at 8:50, instead of trying to get anyone from the group to join me, I walked on over. So I got a few minutes of quiet time in the chapel with just those who had come early to make sure everything was set up correctly. Besides serving as the chapel for the college, a United Church of Christ Congregation meets in the chapel.
Tougaloo College was founded in 1869 by the American Missionary Society to educate the recently freed slaves (Note the date. For those who don’t remember dates, the American Civil War ended in 1865) I think it started off as a trade school and normal school, i.e. teacher’s college. As the years went by, they added more courses of study. Currently, a huge percentage of black physicians and lawyers in the state of Mississippi are graduates of Tougaloo College.
We learned this history in the afternoon from the director of facilities who gave us a short tour of the campus. Woodworth chapel served as a planning site and respite site for people in the nonviolent civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s. Henry, our trip leader, was allowed into the same pulpit where people such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers, and Robert Kennedy. Performers who came were Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Frank Sinatra. I know I have forgotten some!
The chapel was built in 1901 and closed in 1988 because of structural problems. It was restored and is a National Historic Building. The restoration cost a lot more than originally estimated (remember that our tour guide was the facilities guy?). I wish I could remember more of the details. For example, the pipes on the pipe organ had been painted in gold. When they began the restoration, they found that under the gold the pipes originally had stenciling. A lot of the chapel was built by student labor and the chairs up front were hand-carved by students.
After learning the history of the chapel we went outside and saw a sidewalk with commemorative bricks for the Freedom Riders and participants in Freedom Summer, a voter registration drive in 1964 in Mississippi. Our guide talked about one of the commemorative events where someone had said how brave the very first Freedom Riders had been. Their bus was set on fire and the doors held shut to try to burn the riders inside. The man said, “We weren’t brave. The ones who rode the second bus were brave.”
Here is part of a Wikipedia article: “On May 14, Mother’s Day, in Anniston, a mob of Klansmen, some still in church attire, attacked the first of the two buses (the Greyhound). The driver tried to leave the station, but was blocked until KKK members slashed its tires.[11] The mob forced the crippled bus to stop several miles outside of town and then firebombed it.[12][13] As the bus burned, the mob held the doors shut, intending to burn the riders to death. Sources disagree, but either an exploding fuel tank[12] or an undercover state investigator brandishing a revolver caused the mob to retreat, and the riders escaped the bus.[14] The mob beat the riders after they got out. Only warning shots fired into the air by highway patrolmen prevented the riders from being lynched.[12]”
All of this happened within my lifetime in my own nation. I was a child, but was still vaguely aware of most of the things that happened during the ’60s. More, of course, as I got older and learned to read. I didn’t know about the issues at all. I only really knew about the violence and hatred, but only indirectly.
A Tougaloo professor and some of his students staged a Woolworth sit-in in Jackson, MS. I don’t know how to embed the picture, but they had a copy on the wall in the small art gallery we visited during our tour. There were also some very moving art works. One was titled simply Labor. It showed a nine months pregnant black woman pulling hard on a rope. It reminds me of what I heard from a man a few days later in Montgomery, AL. His mom picked 200 pounds of cotton on a Friday, and two days later, gave birth to his brother on Sunday.
I thought I took some pictures inside the art gallery, but I can’t find them, so I may not have done that. They never really convey the meaning anyway.
This is a remarkable journey. I am glad that you are joining me along the way.