Charles Person 59 years old

I’m an electronics technician for the Atlantic Public Schools. I grew up in , until age 19 when I joined the Marine Corps. I retired in Cuba and ran a business in Cuba for about four years. I retired in 1981 and I stayed there until ’84.

I grew up at a time when America needed scientists, and I had always wanted to be a scientist. I had worked in high school to get the kind of grades. I was in special mathematics, I was in a pilot program where they were teaching calculus to high school kids, or analysis it was called then. So I was geared toward that type of work. My SAT scores and my GPA were good enough to get me accepted at MIT, but Georgia Tech was also the number one engineering school in the South, so I applied to Georgia Tech, and of course rejected my application. So I could not understand, here we were competing with the Russians, because the Russians had launched Sputnik, and we say we needed scientists, yet I was being denied an opportunity to go to a school which I was imminently qualified to go to, so that gave me the impetus to get involved in all the civil rights activities that were happening on campus. Hamilton Holmes was at Morehouse where I was a freshman, and he had been accepted as well, and he was being allowed to go to the University of Georgia. So this was a great time, the energy on campus with all the kids being involved in all those kind of activities, it just snowballed. Once I got involved, it was infectious, anything that had to do with protests, I was there. My life revolved around it, I did my homework and my assignment around sitting-in. You’d be surprised how good study habits you can develop, because you were just sitting at a lunch counter with no place to go, they weren’t going to feed us, so you just sat there and did your studies. The students were great, because they would get our assignments to us, and stuff, and we would give the completed papers and stuff to them once we got them finished. So it worked out well.

We had a guy who would come out of the kitchen with a meat cleaver, and he would threaten to chop us up. They would throw salt and pepper on us, of course, mustard and ketchup and that kind of stuff. They would throw cigarette butts at you, somebody would try to put them out on you. But nothing life threatening, just all this intimidation, a lot of them were striking out. You’ve got to realize that for a lot of these whites, this is the first time that blacks had rebelled. You know, normally you knew your place and knew what was expected of you, and everybody was happy. But we weren’t happy. But that’s the way things were. To see young people not obeying these authority figures was just unheard of, so they were just as shocked and they didn’t know how to deal with it. And also since we didn’t fight back, there was no justification to use force, or what have you, and the tactic of was unheard of, and they didn’t know how to deal with it. There’s no fun beating someone who’s not going to fight back. If you’re in a fight and someone gives you a really great....and you really took him out, but wasn’t nobody fighting, it was like fighting a girl. There’s no honor in fighting someone who doesn’t fight back. So, really I think that helped us a lot, because we went into the Freedom Rides, and they beat me, and they just shoved me, they just let me go because I wouldn’t fight back, I didn’t even cover up, and they just let me go. I think nonviolence was something no one was prepared to deal with from a violent standpoint.

Those helped, because it’s hard to imagine some of the things that we’d done and think that it had happened to other students. It gave us the opportunity to go through the drill, you don’t know how you’re going to respond until you actually get in that situation, but when there are no surprises, I think you’re much better prepared. And I know that going through training program in Washington, D.C. was very, very helpful to me.

I was working with the Atlanta Committee on the Appeal to Human Rights. I worked with two other guys, Frank Holloway and Leon Green. They called us guerrillas because the three of us could go into any lunch counter and we’d shut it down. To work with Frank, Frank was a large, is a large man, and he was a very intimidating figure. I was very small, tiny, about 5”4’ and I weighed about 130 pounds, so I wasn’t a very big person at all. We had the ability to just really shut down a lunch counter. We went to jail together; we spent sixty days in jail. And I spent several days in solitary confinement because I was singing too loud, you know when you had all of us together we were singing, but for some reason they singled me out and they put me in solitary confinement, and believe me that’s an eye opener. It’s a single cell; they had about a 40- watt light bulb, incandescent bulb in the ceiling with no fixture in it, just a naked light bulb in the ceiling. On the bunk there was no linen, all you had was a mattress and not a very large one. You were there by yourself, in your own thoughts, you know and that got to me. It gave me time to reflect, and I think it made me stronger. Out of that episode, when CORE sent out a flyer announcing that they were looking for people to participate in the Freedom Rides, all three of us applied. And I don’t know why they chose me, I was the youngest, I was eighteen at the time, but they chose me to represent Atlanta in the Freedom Rides, and that’s how I got involved.

The original 13, they took one from Atlanta. was not from Atlanta at the time, he was out in Tennessee at the time, and he was with SNCC. Henry Thomas, Hank, he going to Howard University. You had Isaac Reynolds....Mae Bertha....we had several media people on board, and a couple of staff people from CORE to fill out the trip. I was the youngest.

When we left Washington, D.C. it was to test the facilities as we moved south. And that was to test everything, the restrooms, the lunch counters, the shoe-shine polish, any facility that the bus stations offered, we were to test. The white patrons, , would go into the “Colored” facilities and we would go into the facilities marked for “White.” This worked quite well when we stopped. We started at Washington, D.C. on May 4. I was almost arrested in Charlotte, North Carolina for trying to get a shoe shine. But it was not a test; I just needed to get my shoes shined. The gentleman told me that he couldn’t shine my shoes. So I left there and told Mr. Perkins, who was a CORE member, what had happened. So he went in and he tried to get a shoe shine, and they arrested him, but see he was a staff person. This was a test with him that we had anticipated. The only other problem we had was in Rock Hill, South Carolina where a couple of people were kind of beaten and detained. We came to Atlanta, all of us, and we had a great night. That was the night I got the permission from my parents to continue the ride. Before I had told them I was going to go on a trip, but I really wasn’t quite honest with them, what it was all about. This was the day before Mother’s Day, May 13, and mom told me to continue the trip. It was great, because I could spend the night in my own bed. We got up and boarded the buses. That particular day we boarded the Trailways, and was my partner for the day. So we left Atlanta and everything was smooth, we got to a small town near Atlanta, I think it was c- ---my seat was always the first seat as you get on the bus, over your left as you enter the bus. As this passenger was getting off he said “You niggers had it good here in Georgia, you just wait ‘til you get to .” We rode on, we got to Anniston, and Walter Bergman and James went out to get some sandwiches because for some reason they had closed down the Trailways bus stations. There was a group of guys that got on, they had firebombed the one bus, and they said “You niggers need to get in the back of the bus.” We didn’t move. So they started punching at Hank and I, we were sitting together. They physically threw us to the back of the bus. James Peck and Walter Bergman came forward to help us, they were the two whites on the bus. They were sitting in the back of course, because we had flip-flopped positions. They came to our rescue and then they proceeded to beat them. This is when Walter received the beating that later resulted in him having a stroke which later proved to be fatal to him. James just got punched, there was no outward damage to James. They threw all of us, black and white Freedom Riders to the black of the bus, along with the press that was with us. They sat at the front of the bus and antagonized us to Birmingham, looking back and glaring. No physical threats, after they had put us in our places. So we get to Birmingham, and James Peck he looks at me, and I said “Well, let’s go.” So we went into the terminal and the entire wall was lined with men, most of them had on khaki uniforms, and they just came towards us, and they started beating us with pipes and sticks and what have you, and their fists. The last thing I remember is they hit James, and he went down, and they called him a “nigger lover,” of course. He ended up requiring 53 stitches. Me, I had on a coat, we always wore shirt and ties. They were beating me and they had my jacket. There’s one photo that you will see where there’s a guy over a pile of folks, he has a pipe raised, well in that pile, that’s me. We later found that out, when they brought him to trial. The FBI had a photo, a huge photo, and they were able to determine that it was me in the middle of this. I let my coat go, and they let me go. I walked out of the terminal, walked to the street, and as luck would have it, or fate, the city bus came by. I got on the bus and said “Take me somewhere.” I was bleeding from my head, and I didn’t have on a coat. The bus driver took me to an area across the tracks. In those days, the blacks lived on one side of the tracks, and the whites lived on the other side of the tracks. I went across the railroad tracks, and I found a phone booth and I called Rev. Shuttlesworth’s house, and I told him what had happened, and that I was bleeding and needed help, so forth. They told me stay there and they would send a car to get me. The car came and they realized I needed some medical attention. There was three black doctors in town, and all three refused to treat me. James was so badly beaten, they took him to a local hospital, and reluctantly, but because he was white, they did treat him. I never got any treatment, but Rev. Shuttlesworth had a nurse in his congregation, who shaved my head, and she kind of pushed it together and put some kind of bandage on it which was supposed to pull the skin together. It worked out pretty good, except it wouldn’t quite heal. A month or so later, a knot began to develop on the back of my head. For many years I had a huge knot on the back of my head, and I just recently within the last three years, had it removed. We have MRIs so we are able to see what was in there. I was so afraid there might have been a knife blade, or an ice pick, I had no idea what I was hit with. With the advent of new technology, I felt reasonably safe to have it removed. I feel a lot better for it now, because it hampered a lot, it got to the point where I couldn’t sleep on it, that’s how large it was. I’d go to the dentist, and I couldn’t get my head in the little thing where they hold you in place. The kids would laugh at me, at first it was great, because it gave me an opportunity to testify, and explain what had happened. But after a while, you know, the hugger needs a hug sometimes too. And you just get tired, the things that happened in the past, our kids were so unappreciative, or uncaring and I guess you go through this depression. I think what we all need is some kind of catharsis, because I can’t watch a movie about the things that happened. I hear things and I tear up because there is still unfinished business. When things happen, you talk things out, but see we never went through that process. This was a very traumatic day in our lives, and I was only 18. No one came to me and explained this is how, and helped me to deal with the pain. My kids see me out, and we try to watch a movie or something, and I’m crying like a cry baby, I can’t help it. Like today, we were in the cafeteria eating lunch, and they had some musicians there and a lady was singing some of our songs with a new arrangement, and I found myself starting to break down. And I’m saying, “Get a hold of yourself, guy.” There are a lot of unresolved issues with a lot of us with the things that have happened. What bothers me the most is that sometimes I think our kids do not realize how things were. I think if the things that America offers it kids today, if they were available to us, it’s unimaginable what we could have accomplished. Could you imagine having access to the internet, or even a computer in those days? And they just take it for granted. You have tools which could shorten an education and now it takes a kid five years to get out of college, and we were there trying to get out in three. It’s amazing how things have shifted. And as you get older, you wonder, will they ever learn? Do they care? And I think if there was a considerable amount of concern to make things right in this world, and I think we have the resources, we have the mental power in this country to achieve anything. Americans are some of the most ingenious people in the world, and thank god I’ve had the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. I would not live anywhere else, I’m a red-blooded patriot, and I know what this country is capable of doing. But something is stifling us; we’re not getting the most out of our folk.

I think too what hurts is that there are those that have not painted the picture properly. This reunion shows more completely the composition of the Freedom Rides, and most of the student movement. It wasn’t a black thing, it wasn’t a white thing, it wasn’t a Jewish thing. It was young folk across this country who believed that there were wrongs being done, and they wanted to correct it. Because out of this movement came the Women’s movement, the Anti-War movement, the Gay Rights movement, and all the tactics that worked, they work then.

I think if you look at our people, and it was good to see some of the hippy-looking guys come in tonight, I thought this is great, because that was our generation. It’s just amazing, because in spite of the fact that we had different racial make-up, different economic and religious in many cases, but yet we found common ground, and we can do that again.

I felt no pain, and I wasn’t afraid because we prayed a lot, we sang a lot of songs. It was like a pep rally, you fortified yourself for the battle. We started off everyday with prayer, and of course you say those little silent prayers that your mom teaches you to do anyway. And I guess maybe I was just young, when you’re young it always happens to the other guy. I didn’t feel any physical pain, and I was not afraid, because we had work to do. We didn’t know the magnitude of what we were doing, I don’t think we knew the entire ramifications, but we were hoping in some way that we could make a difference. I think that’s incredible, because as a Marine, I found the same thing. You believe in your country, and it gives you that desire to put yourself in harm’s way. It doesn’t matter if it’s a military cause, a patriotic or nationalistic cause, as it was for us then. Because you have to realize most of the blacks in my city who had degrees worked at the post office. It does not require a degree to work at the post office, but that was the only place where a person, male or female, especially of color could get a job and responsibility commensurate with their educational background. They had a scale, and you could move up. Most jobs, you were the last hired and the first to be fired, and we knew this. How can you raise a family, buy a house, with that kind of precarious economic future? But that’s what we lived with. My dad worked two jobs, he worked 17 hours a day, and he....one of his jobs, he made $42 a week so one job was not enough. There were seven of us and we had a lot of fun as a family because we had a proud family. We didn’t have much economically, but we had a lot of love. And it seemed like Mom could make a meal out of nothing.....But we on the weekends would go visit relatives in the country...and because of the long hours I think it shortened his life.....He was a good man....

We wanted to continue, but our ranks were thin. Most of the ones on the bus that was burned have smoke inhalation problems. On our bus, James was in bad shape. I could have continued, because at the time it was as small lump, at first. Many others were just traumatized. The media we had, they didn’t want any more to do with it. This was before a lot of the other deaths that came. We realized that the sacrifices were there, and I don’t think anyone would mind if you had to pay the ultimate sacrifice. But it was really, really rough for CORE to consolidate their sources, and it was great that SNCC was able to get the people and the kids throughout the country. Their response was just remarkable, because the folks that came after us, they came from all over. From Canada, New York, Florida, it was just amazing the outpouring from people who were willing to put their lives on the line, because we didn’t know how far the plan was prepared to go.

After we tried to leave Birmingham, the bus drivers just refused to take us. They just said no we’re not going unless you can guarantee our safety. So we tried to fly out of there, but there were bomb threats. So after many, many delays, they just decided that we would go ahead and fly into New Orleans, they had schedule a rally for us on the 17th of May. So, they had families to put us up when we got into New Orleans, and we stayed there until the rally on the 17th, which was great because the city of New Orleans was just wonderful. It gave us a time to heal, we met a lot of the people who came to replace us, we met them and then they went back up…some of them flew from New Orleans to Montgomery and to Birmingham to start the trip back over. And you know what happened to John Lewis and Jim? when they came through….they were together. That was in Montgomery. Q: Are you friends with John Lewis. A: Yes, I’ve campaigned with him. Being an electronic technician, I have certain things that I can help politicians with, get the message out so to speak, be it mobile or otherwise. And the person that he was running against, I was determined that John defeat him. So, I had an extra interest in seeing that John win, and I accompanied him again on the reunion in May, when we went back. That was a hard trip, because I had not been to Anniston since that day. That was really touching because the community now is so different because the people were waving their American flags, instead of their bars and stars, and they had smiles instead of frowns. It was so different, and that was a good day, a good day.

Outwardly, I’m very pleased. I think there is a lot of good that is going here. I asked one of the councilperson’s today, do they do good work. In other words, is the council working for the betterment of a community, not for special interests here or there. I’m not so hooked on numbers, as long as people are working together. It doesn’t have to be two females, one black, that’s not important. What’s important in the community is that you do see a reflection of what the community is, but also can it work together? Can it work together on difficult problems? This is what we achieve, we don’t want a perfect society, we want one where we can work together. It’s OK for you to disagree, I’m not going to agree with everything, but I’m not going to be mad at you either. You have the right to express yourself. We as Americans sometimes, if you don’t disagree with us on one point, we just get mad. On others we might be in total agreement, but we get mad and we get huffy and we don’t want to cooperate. Since September 11th, I’ve seen more cooperation and more empathy for one another in a long, long time in society. But we can do this everyday; we can take it up a notch. It’s so much nicer when we get along. There’s so much more energy to hate—you get mad, your blood pressure go up, you get little frown marks on your face. I guess I’m fortunate because I have lived in other countries and you so many things that we take for granted. You go into American grocery stores, and you see all the wonderful produce and meat, it’s just great. You go into other countries and see what we would just throw away in the garbage cans being put out on display to be sold. We have so much to be grateful for and we don’t realize it. We have so much wasted talent in this country. You go to homeless shelters, or you go to a battered women’s’ shelter, and you wonder how can this exist in our society? And we have the brainpower to solve all these problems.

I have lots of children. I have three girls from a previous marriage, and I fell in love again and I have one biological daughter and we have two adopted kids. I think sometimes they think I’m too hard on them, because I stress everyday the importance of education, because it’s not being enforced throughout their other relationships. It used to be the church reinforced it. They’re aware (of the work he’s done) You have to make them aware because two things that happen in our community is that kid’s laugh at each for various reasons, some because they don’t have designer clothes, some because they are nerdy. It’s OK to get As and Bs, even as a male. See, I went through that phase, and they would say, well that’s Charlie and it’s OK for him to get As and Bs because I was just as hard-nosed at football as other sports as I was at academics. I had the grandparents, and parents, where I could not bring home a C. Cs are average, and you’re not average, why study for a C? ….So, yes, maybe I’m overbearing. But the opportunity to learn, and my kids live on the Internet. I want them to have the freedom, but I want them to have a inquisitive mind. See, you can have a car, and it can be repossessed, and I could go out on the freeway and it be torn up, or car jacked. But if I acquire knowledge, unless I get Alzheimer’s then no one can take that away from me. Education is complex, but I’m convinced if a child can truly read and truly do mathematics, they can do anything. I can read a book on geology, Calculus, what have you and I can learn to do anything. But if I can’t read, I’m stifled. So we do a lot of reading, and if I have any wealth in this world, it’s books. I probably own about 10,000 books. Because I have an inquiring mind, if I want to know something, I want to know. My kids know if they say something, we’re going to do a little research. It’s important that they see their family read, and it’s important for them to know that there’s information out there, and they need to know how to get it.

It’s not something I talk about often. I get the chance from time to time to talk to young people, and I try to give them some sense of what it’s like. And it’s important for them to realize that others, especially the non-blacks, who have made the sacrifice, because they didn’t have to. So many of our friends, our colleagues, they had substantial lives as far as American citizens. They had made it, their families had wealth and privilege and they risked it all for us. And that’s amazing. When your friends can come to your aid, and that’s why I let my kids know that it was not just black students, it was a lot of good folk working to try to make things better.