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8 Leaders of Tomorrow! MARCH 1997 MBC Wolverine OBSERVER on in the^Wome of the /ord by Octavia Vivian M any have never understood the religious dynamics behind the Non-Violent civil rights movement. The movement was to me, a culmination of millions of prayers prayed by anguished black people for deliverance. It was an act of God that caused gentle Rosa Parks to remain seated on a bus. Her action led to the rise of a black leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. Repeatedly Coretta Scott King has said she feels God was preparing her to be Martin Luther King’s helpmate when He was preparing her late husband to lead people to freedom. Repeatedly she has said God brought her and Martin together. I too feel the part that my husband, the Rev. C.T. Vivian, and I have played was directed by the hand of God. C.T. and I have always felt that God brought us together. Was it a coincidence that the same month and the same year that Martin and Coretta were meeting in Boston C.T. and I were meeting in Peoria, Illinois? As I go back I have felt God was directing me since I was four years old. I went to church not because my parents made me, but because I liked to go. Sunday School was insisted upon by my parents, Leslie and Alvier Lee Geans, but I always wanted to go to church. Long before I joined church at the age of 17 I remember walking home from school with the feeling that God was so close. After finishing Pontiac Senior High School in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1946 I was accepted to go to Wilber- force University. Just before leaving I received a letter informing me that housing was not available to me and therefore I could not come. I beat a tearful path to the High School principal’s office. He assured me he would get me in school somewhere. A week later I received a wire telling me to report to Ypsilanti, Michigan’s Michigan State Normal College (now named Eastern Michigan University) That was one of the most significant things that could have happened to me because one day in a sociology class my instructor was assigning theme paper topics. He said, “Octavia Geans?” I answered, “yes?”. He simply stated the topic of my theme “Am I Different?” I flushed, feeling particularly singled out, being the only Negro in the class. In search of material I found the article, “Color Complex” in a 1947 issue of Ebony. If my memory serves me correctly it was the July issue. That article did more than anything else to prepare me for the life I was to lead as the wife of a minister in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. The “Color Complex” article dealt with the feelings of inferiority that Black youth felt about their color. I faced the fact that I too possessed these feelings of inferiority.... Through prayer and much more reading in this area I was able to rid myself of these feelings because Mrs. Vivian - Worked at Morris Brown College from 1974 to 1980 in the Public Relations Office. Mrs. Octavia Vivian I saw myself and everyone else of the same value in the eyes of God. I saw my own worth....no less and no more than anyone else....but equally as important. I finished college in 1950 and had some difficulty in finding work...All the time feeling there was something I should be doing with my life. I felt I should be doing something but could not figure out what it was. My cousin, Essie Tatum (Mrs. Winfred Bruce) of Dayton invited me to come to Dayton to look for a job. April 1, 1951 I packed my bag and left for Dayton. I soon found myself working for the Metropolitan Housing Authority but I still felt I should be doing something else. I was considering entering the ministry and event ually entering the WAC’s as a chaplain. On New Year’s Eve I had a date to attend a party. I had bought a new dress for the party and had looked forward to the event. Everyone was having a good time but in the midst of the gaiety I suddenly thought to myself, “Now there is something I am supposed to be doing.” I wanted to leave the party. I wanted to be alone. At the same time I did not want to be rude to my date. I stayed until the New Year came in before asking to be taken home. When I got to the room I found Essie my room mate was still out. I closed the door and knelt beside the bed. I gave my life completely to God asking him to take me and use my life anyway He saw fit. Within nine days. I had a call from Henry Harper, Director or the Carver Community Center, Peoria, Illinois telling me of an opening as Girl’s and Women’s Work Director of the Center. I went for the interview, was hired and on the job by Feb. 4, 1952. Being a new staff member of the Community Center, a reception was given in my honor in order that I might meet some young people. Among those who came was a young man who was wearing the begin nings of a beard. I still remember how he was dressed....glen plaid suit, white shirt and a sky-blue knit tie. There was a certain air about him that set him apart from everyone else. I found myself wondering what he did. I mentioned to a group later in the evening that my birthday (my 24th) would be coming up on the 23rd of February and that it was the first time I would be away from both family and friends. Late afternoon of the 23rd, I was sitting in the kitchen eating when the doorbell rang. My landlady told me, much to my surprise, that someone was waiting to see me. There stood the young man I wondered about at the reception. “Miss Geans” he began, “you said you would be spending your first birthday away from your family and friends today and I was wandering how you would like to go to a movie this evening?” I had not recalled him being in ear shot when I made the remark. When I had gotten over being overwhelmed with the fact that he had remembered I answered, “yes.” He came back to pick me up at 7:30. Neither one of us proposed. We just belonged together. We were married a year later on the anniversary of our first date and on my 25th birthday, 1953. Twenty months after our marriage C.T. informed me he was going into the ministry. I then gave up my membership in the A.M.E. Methodist Church and joined the Baptist church to be with him. (Another similarity...Coretta had been Methodist and Martin and C.T. Baptist). C.T.’s desire was to go to New York to Divinity School but I argued he came from a predominantly white community and had moved in white circles in Macomb, Illinois. I thought he projected a white image more than a black one. I went on to say if he pastored it would most likely be in a Negro church and therefore he should become more Negro orientated. I suggested he go to the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville as the members of his church wanted. He consented. In 1958 C.T. became one of the ministers to work in the Nashville, Tennessee Sit-in Movement, truly one of the greatest Non-Violent movements in the South. Out of the Nashville movement came civil rights leaders who are still active with the movement.... John Lewis, former head of SNCC; James Bevel, Banard Lafayett, Marion Berry, James Lawson and C.T. Out of Nashville also grew SNCC. Rev. James Lawson emerged as projected? leader of Nashville. Lawson knew and understood the theory of Ghandi and interpreted non-violence as a weapon to the entire city and in workshops to train people all over the South. During the sit-ins there was prayer around the clock. A group would pray from 1 to 2 o’clock. Another group 2 o’clock to 3 etc....As students and ministers faced courts, every Negro attorney in Nashville, at no cost, came to the aid of those jailed. People put up their homes for bonds. Money was contributed freely. It was the ministers from this movement who took up the freedom rides after the severe beating of riders and burning of the buses in Alabama in 1961. C.T. was on the first bus of Freedom Riders to enter Jackson, Mississippi, thus becoming one of the first group of ministers in the Western Hemisphere to be arrested for challenging the evils of segregation. The arrest itself was a miracle. Those on the bus had readied themselves for death....death for freedom. The very nature of Mississippi left no doubt in anyone’s mind that the riders would not escape physical harm. At best they would be jailed. I prayed almost every moment taking time out to try to prepare my three oldest children Alvier Denise, then 6, Cordy Jr. then 5, and Kira then 4. I tried to prepare them for their father’s going to jail. I tried to explain about slavery and the long years of discrimination. I told them their father had gone to help white people to see Negroes should be free. Besides the three children mentioned I had a two year old, Mark, a one year old Anita Charisse and was in the early stages of pregnancy with our 6th and last child Albert. We knew the risks we were running but felt this was what God wanted of us. I had fought that battle a short time before when I took the easy way out and found no peace of mind. James Lawson, expelled from Vanderbilt University for his part in the sit-ins, lived across the street and had been arrested. Cars moved about the neighborhood with lights out. They stopped several times and occupants observed an old station wagon belonging to a neighbor and which greatly resembled ours. Neighbors began to call me about the cars in the neighborhood. I became frightened for C.T. and although warned many times by Jim that we must not run away, I panicked. Believing my phone to be tapped I went across the hall to the apartment of Dr. and Mrs. Earl Orr and asked to use their phone. I called a school mate of mine from Pontiac who was working in Nashville, Eddie Edwards, and asked him to go by the church where C.T. was meeting and get C.T. to spend the night at his apartment. A half hour later there was a knock at the door. It was Eddie. He told me he had parked his car some distance away and had walked to our house. He said he had talked to C.T. who did not want to agree to not coming home. Eddie said he asked C.T. to do . it for me and finally C.T. gave in. Not wanting anyone to know where C.T. was I asked Eddie to call my number when C.T. was safe in his apartment and let the phone ring twice and hang up. It seemed like an eternity before the phone rang twice. C.T. was safe but there was no peace for me. I had run away. I had caused C.T. to run away. I felt I had failed God. I did not sleep that night. I promised that night that I would never interfere. I asked God’s forgiveness and my fears abated. At the time of the Freedom Ride to Jackson, Mississippi, we were in the process of leaving the Nashville church and moving to the Chattanooga, Tennessee church. I was busy packing to pass the time away while C.T. was in the Hinds County Jail. News reached me that C.T. had been beaten for not saying “sir.” A member of the Nashville Church, Mrs. Culous Hayes, offered to keep the children while I went to