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In The Shadows of Birmingham: The 1962-1963 Huntsville Civil Rights Movement J. Brandon Curnel © Copyright 2015 by Jonathan B. Curnel All rights reserved. Published in the Huntsville History Collection with the permission of the author March, 2016 1 DEDICATION I dedicate this work to my parents, Melvin and Linda Curnel, who always fully supported me and my endeavors, and to Dr. Sonnie Hereford III. Your bravery and will to pursue equality in the face of adversity has inspired me and will inspire future generations to come. 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank Dr. Sonnie Hereford III and Sonnie Hereford IV for sharing firsthand knowledge of events surrounding the Huntsville Civil Rights Movement. I would also like to thank Hank Thomas. Not only are you are lifelong proponent of civil rights and proud veteran of the Vietnam War, you brought the Civil Rights Movement to Huntsville, Alabama. I thoroughly enjoyed your fascinating life story, including your time as a Freedom Rider. Finally, to my wife, Nikki, and three daughters, Whitney, Lainey, and Julia, thank you for providing me a non- academic, fun, and loving atmosphere after long stressful days of battling the library stacks. 3 ABSTRACT This essay examines the Huntsville Civil Rights Movement and what made the movement both unique and an overwhelming success. The study analyzes the impact Project Paperclip, the relocation of Nazi scientists, had on the Huntsville area and the movement toward social justice. The study shows why Huntsville was a prime location for a groundbreaking movement leading to Huntsville being the first desegregated city in the state of Alabama and home to the first desegregated public school system in the “Heart of Dixie”. This examination of events involving Huntsville concludes that because of the influx of Nazi scientists and the businesses that followed, Huntsville was more apt, compared to other cities in state, to accept a civil rights movement ultimately leading to the achievement of integration. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...6 I. No Ordinary Cotton Town………………………………………..……………...11 II. Inhuman………………………………………………………………………….26 III. The Sit-Ins Hit Huntsville……….………………………..………………..…….36 IV. Blue Jeans Sunday.……………………………………………………………….50 V. Huntsville Defies Wallace………………………………………………………..64 VI. The Huntsville Way………………………………………………………...……82 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………............87 5 INTRODUCTION “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”.1 -Governor George C. Wallace January 14, 1963 On a warm humid Alabama morning, an eighty-two year old man clasped the hand of his fifty-six year old son and began a casual stroll down a sidewalk in the heart of the medical district in Huntsville, Alabama. However, on this September 9, 2013 morning, it was not a usual father – son bonding experience. The walk was a reenactment of one the most historic days in the history of the state of Alabama. The two men, grayed with age, were retracing the steps they took fifty years prior when, then six –year old, Sonnie Hereford IV became the first African American student permitted to enroll in an Alabama public school, thus ending a century of school segregation in the racially charged state. Just as in 1962, there were no national media outlets present, only a handful of locals, including this author, who viewed the recreation as a landmark achievement and watershed moment in Alabama history. Truly, the Huntsville Civil Rights Movement had long been placed squarely in the shadows of Birmingham. This study will examine why Huntsville should be recognized for its unprecedented achievements and why this former “cotton town” was unique. Additionally, we will 1 Townshend Davis, Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1998), 47. 6 examine how the introduction of former Nazi rocket scientists to the area primed Huntsville to become the first integrated city in Alabama during a time when violence reigned across the region. This study will conclude that due to the inflow of transplant workers, the unwavering leadership of the movement, and a firm commitment to nonviolence, Huntsville’s successful civil rights movement stands above comparison. For many Americans, the Civil Rights Movement conjures up mental images of racial violence, police brutality, the Klu Klux Klan, powerful leadership among the African American community, nonviolent marches, and triumph. During the struggle for equality two states proved more uncompromising than any others; Alabama and Mississippi. Historians and those who lived the experience still debate which of the two Deep South states was more disinclined for change. In terms of historiography, Alabama’s involvement in the overall movement predominantly focuses on three cities: Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma. Adding Huntsville to this list is long overdue. Montgomery claimed national attention after the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, which made Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. household names. The capital of Alabama obtained further notoriety on May 20, 1961 when Freedom Riders, such as John Lewis and Jim Zwerg along with John Siegenthaler, a representative of the United States government, were badly beaten at the Greyhound bus terminal. Selma will always be etched in the conscience of America. A nation watched on “Bloody Sunday” March 7, 1965 as Alabama state troopers pummeled a peaceful crowd marching as they attempted to cross the Alabama River over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Then there is Birmingham. Birmingham, undeniably, was the most violent and most racist city in the United States. Referred to as “Bombingham”, the most populated city in Alabama, witnessed eight 7 bombings alone in 1963, all “unsolved”.2 Included in the wave of bombings was that of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church which grotesquely claimed the lives of four innocent elementary school girls. Birmingham was the prime example of a police state. The leader of the Birmingham Police Department was the infamous Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Conner. According to Bull Conner, the violent use of “police dogs and fire hoses was just standard police procedure for crowd control”3. The White House and nation watched in disgust as the Birmingham Fire Department ripped the flesh off of children, some as young as eight years old, with high pressure fire hoses. In the spring of 1963 the Children’s Crusade, also called the Children’s March, witnessed the arrest of thousands of Birmingham children who were caged in animal stockyards at the Birmingham Fair Grounds. The youth were subjected to the elements and given minuscule rations of food and water. While Birmingham was receiving warranted national media attention and pressure from the highest levels of government, another major Alabama city already made significant and historic strides in arena of the Civil Rights Movement. That city was Huntsville, Alabama, a name that rarely comes into the discussion on the topic of civil rights in Alabama. When investigating the movement in Huntsville, it is evident that enormous holes exist within its historiography, because, for over fifty years, the Huntsville Movement has been overshadowed by events in Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham. Accurate and authentic information on events in Huntsville is limited. Currently there are two 2 George McMillan, “America Spelled Backward” Life Magazine, October 11, 1963, 39. 3 Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: The Climatic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 22. 8 published works on the subject. However, neither is dedicated solely to the movement in its entirety. The two works are The Agitator's Daughter (2008) and Beside the Trouble Waters (2011). In his autobiography, Beside the Trouble Waters, Dr. Sonnie Hereford III, a leader of the Huntsville movement, with meticulous detail, chronicles many key events of the movement. However, this book is a personal history. The same is found with Sheryll Cashin, the daughter of movement leader John L. Cashin and author of The Agitator's Daughter. To date, there is not one published extended work dedicated solely to the Huntsville Civil Rights Movement. When putting the Huntsville movement in historiographic context, we must evaluate the historiography of the overall movement. Since a true start date to the Civil Rights Movement cannot be agreed upon, the beginning of the historiography is also in question. C. Vann Woodward’s, The Strange Career of Jim Crow must certainly be mentioned as a pioneering work. Published in 1955 and coming off the heels of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, Martin Luther King Jr. himself labeled Woodward’s work as the “Holy Bible of the Civil Rights Movement”.4 In his essay, “Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement”, historian Steven F. Lawson brilliantly outlines how scholarly work on the subject has evolved over the decades. Initial works focused primarily on the movement’s leaders. Over the next three decades the historiography expanded to broader topics and sub- topics, such as Freedom Summer.5 The 2000s ushered in a new era of Civil Rights historiography. Grandiose scholarship was apparent as historians produced some of the 4 Sheldon Hackney, “C. Vann Woodward, Dissenter,” Historically Speaking 10, no. 1 (2009): 31. 5 Steven F. Lawson, “Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement,” The American Historical Review 96 no. 2 (April 1991): 456-457. 9 best chronicled and detailed works on the subject to date. Included in this assessment is Diane McWhorter’s 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner for non-fiction, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution and Raymond Arsenault’s 2006 gem, Freedom Riders:1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) turned Arsenault’s account of the horrific treatment of the riders into a documentary. The powerful film, which included numerous interviews with the actual participants, won three Emmys and the prestigious Peabody Award.

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