Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Leaders of Tomorrow! MARCH 1997 MBC Wolverine OBSERVER 9 Mississippi. Somehow I felt C.T. would not want this unless it were serious. We both knew what we were involved in was dangerous but we were both committed as we both saw my role as being home taking care of things to free C.T. to move about. I called the SNCC office. They had not heard of the beating but told me they would call an attorney in Jackson and would get back to me how seriously C.T. had been hurt. I received word from them later that C.T. had not been hurt seriously.... he had been hit on learn to drive to be a Welfare Worker in Chattanooga. Welfare Work showed me the depth of deprivation that faced our poor people....had I not learned to drive I would have been lost in Atlanta. I had to do the marketing, banking, and driving the children to school. I painted walls, did the floors, cut the lawn, washed the car, and tried to interpret to the children why their Daddy was away so much. C.T. and I had to live with the fact that our lives together could be ended at anytime. When we kissed to be put to the door and I could summon help before that could happen, but most likely if someone had been there they had been frightened away. For months someone had been hanging around the house. Each morning cigarette butts would be found under the living room window. They would be swept away and the next morning others were there. A shotgun shell had been found under a chair on my porch. I had called police to ask that they pass by my house regularly during the night. window to the shrubbery at the edge of the driveway. We moved from the house in August of 1966. The family was safe and intact. Through prayer God does sustain. There were times too that I sensed C.T. was in danger. I usually did not have a phone number where I could reach him because he was in a steady move. When I got those moods I would begin to pray and pray until I felt things were alright again. Once I dreamed I was looking through a newspaper and saw a 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. the head while wearing clerical attire. He had been treated and the F.B.I. was investigating. A member of the Chattanooga church, Mrs. Alberta Height, called me and told me she had talked to C.T. by phone in the Hinds County jail and that he was fine. I was thrilled and surprised. I had never dreamed I could have called him in jail. Mrs. Height said she threatened to call all over the country if they did not let her speak to her pastor to see that he was all right. She was told to wait 15 minutes and call back and they would have C.T. on the phone. She did and he was. I called Rev. Grady Donald’s wife and she tried to call her husband and I tried to call mine but to no avail. I continued to pray for C.T.’s safety. People from the community came to call to see if I needed anything. Kelly Miller Smith and Metz Rollins (both ministers) went to Jackson to escort C.T. home. They risked their lives to be with C.T. They feared for his safety and did not want C.T. to leave jail alone when he was released. C.T. later told me that on the plane coming home Kelly had told him that people had come by to see me expecting to find me in tears and found me cool and calm. There was a look of pride about C.T.’s face as he said, “That’s my Baby.” We had been in Chattanooga two years when C.T. came to tell me he had been asked to join the staff of S.C.L.C. as Director of Affiliates. We considered the possibility of the dangers we would be living with and the dangers for the children. I told C.T. I was willing to go. The hardest part was interpreting to C.T.’s mother, who has since passed, why we were going to Atlanta, Georgia. My every prayer was that my teenage step-daughter, JoAnna, would understand. She had lived with her grandmother most of her life since she was two. She had not spent as much time with her father as the other children and I prayed she would not lose him to death. The move to Atlanta meant that I too must live with the knowledge that my husband would live in constant danger. Though I had not, prior to that time, met Coretta King I never let a day go by that I did not pray that she might maintain her strength under the pressures she and her husband faced. I never thought I would meet her let alone find myself in a similar situation. As I look back now I see those two years in Chattanooga as a base for preparing me to be ready. I had to each other good-bye we knew there was always a possibility that we would not see each other again ....yet the knowledge did not make us live in fear. We made the most of our times together. We became even closer...even though we saw each other less. We became completely tuned to one another....So much so I recall standing on the porch and I suddenly said to myself, “C.T. needs a green tie.” I turned to go into the house and C.T. was coming out of the bedroom. We met in the living room. “You know what I need” C.T. asked. “You need a green tie” I said. C.T.’s facial expression of sheer amazement awakened me to the fact of what had happened. “How did you know that?” he asked. “I don’t know” I said, “I just knew.” God’s presence was ever with me. Sometimes in the evenings I would sit down, exhausted, and the children were asleep. In my moments of loneliness I would say “C.T. please call me” and never did over twenty minutes pass that the phone didn’t ring and C.T.’s voice would be on the other end saying “Hello, Darling, for some reason I felt I should call you.” three times I was very ill and C.T. walked through the door when I needed him most....Twice I was extremely frightened and both times the phone rang and C.T. was on the other end. One of those times C.T. was in Selma, Alabama. I was suddenly awakened by a loud crashing sound. Had someone gotten into the house I wondered. I grabbed my robe and stood in the bedroom doorway. I stood silently for a few minutes. There was a phone in the bedroom and one in the kitchen. I was afraid to leave the doorway to reach the bedroom phone and afraid to go through the living room and dining room to the kitchen phone. As I stood trying to decide what to do the phone rang. Since help would be on the phone I answered in the bedroom. It was C.T. “I just had the feeling that I should call” he said. I told him what had happened. C.T. told me to leave the phone then and check the house while he was on the phone. I did....everywhere but the basement. I was afraid to go down there and there was a lock and night lock on the door leading to the basement. All windows, door and every thing in the house were locked. The kids were asleep. I checked under beds, behind doors, in closets. I felt certain then that if anyone had been in the house it would have been in the basement. I felt too that a shoulder would have One night extremely late I was aware of someone on the front porch. I froze in my tracks. I called ‘Whose there”? A man’s voice mumbled-he was looking for someone. I told him they did not live at this address. I went to my bedroom window and peeked out. A man with a large dog was leaving my yard. The phone rang. It was C.T. Our daughter, Charisse found a sharp steak knife in the back yard. I called police to report the knife. Two very polite white policemen came at once. They told me that type knife was used to often pick locks. They went through the house showing me which lock could be picked and which could not. Whoever it was hanging around the house was indeed persistent. Even after flood lights the cigarette butts moved from beneath the picture of C.T. being helped out of water by two men. The dream was so real I searched through a stack of papers. I always saved the back issues for C.T. and he would read them when he came home. I searched for days and still found no picture. C.T. came home and had a bandage behind his ear. He had been involved in the wade-ins in St. Augustine, Florida. He had been swimming when someone hit him (perhaps cut him from the nature of the wound) behind the ear. C.T. went under water. He felt hands on him and thought he was going to be drowned but instead a policeman helped him out of the water. Later that evening I opened C.T.’s suit case to get his clothes to wash. There was the pair of trunks he CONTINUED ON PAGE 11 A Leadership Profile A Leadership Profile Coretta Scott King by Octavio Vivian This special magazine “Civil Rights in the USA", a profile on Coretta Scott King by Octavia Vivian is available for $5.99. Mail a check or money order payable to: BASIC - Send payment, your name and address to: BASIC, 1328 Cascade Falls Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30311. For more information call BASIC at 404 505-8521.