
          The Movement Remembered: "Like A Banked Fire"
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, pp. 8-13
          
          Worth Long: When did you first realize that
there was a need for civil_rights change, for change in the state of
Mississippi?
          Aurelia Norris Young: Even before my children
were born. I noticed that there were no parks or playgrounds or
libraries. We could not get into the Scouts, Boy Scouts nor Girl
Scouts. I really didn't want to rear my children in Jackson. But my
husband was from Mississippi, and in spite of efforts of my father to
get him transferred to Ohio, he said he'd rather stay. So I began to
work in the community to get activities for children.
          We started a little library on Farish Street, by donating our own
used books and buying used books. That was the time that I realized
that the black_community needed more than we had.
          I was mainly interested in starting a music program. There was no
degree program for music in the state. I began working at
Tougaloo. They promised that they were going to set up a program, and
did not. So the president of Jackson State promised that if I'd come
there, he'd set up a music program. So I moved to Jackson State,
stayed there thirty years.
          It was not a university then and I was simply one of two music
teachers. We taught practically thirty hours a week. We had to do
everything, even going out recruiting students for the program.
          Jackson State had a laboratory school and I took my children with
me everywhere I went. They went to the nursery on campus, and
elementary school. My husband was working at the post office and
making shoes at night. So he got home very late, I was young and it
didn't seem like such a big job then. I couldn't do it now.
          As in many black communities in the South, our community of black
people was self-contained. We seldom had to go to the white community
for anything. Very little contact, so I really did not know what we
could do. We worked trying to get things for that little small
community.
          Long: You said your husband was born in
Mississippi. What was his name and where was he born, and under what
circumstances?
          Young: Jack Harvey Young. He was the third child
in a family of four. His mother was a widow. His father died when he
was nine. He worked after school to help her support the other
children.
          He was a postman for twenty-five years. One day I saw two law books
and found out that his desire was to study law. I kept insisting that
he study, but we couldn't find any school in the South that would take
a black person. So he read law under Sidney Redmond in St. Louis. He
read at night. He would come in from his work, eat, rest and about ten
o'clock get up and study. When he passed the bar in the Fifties he
began practicing right away. Those were hard times for us. We felt
that if you were to work in the post office and practice law on the
side, you would always be known as the postman rather than the
lawyer. But, it was fortunate because when the civil_rights movement
came he was available to help.
          Long: How many other attorneys in the city would
take civil_rights cases?
          Young: There were only two others. Carsie Hall,
and R. Jess Brown. Carsie and my husband went all through high_school
together and they studied together, Carsie passed the bar a year
later.
          Long: So that meant how many black attorneys in
the state of Mississippi?
          Young: At that time I think there were five or
six. One in Mound Bayou, one in Meridian who was quite aged and these
three. But only the three here in Jackson took civil_rights cases. So
they ran all over the state.
          Long: Do you remember during those years who was
able to register and vote? What were the prerequisites?
          Young: There had been people who had been
registering in the city of Jackson for many, many years without
problems. But in the rural areas and in the towns smaller than Jackson
they could not register. Prerequisites varied from city to city. It
depended on who was asking the questions. How many buttons on your
clothes, recite the constitutions. So there was no such standards, but
the main idea was to ask the questions they could not answer.

          Long: How did change happen when it did come?
          Young: I suppose it's like a banked fire, and
just suddenly it breaks out. That's the way it happened in Jackson. It
started here with nine students at Tougaloo in March, 1961, sitting-in
at the public library. They were arrested. My husband got them out of
jail right away, and they were to appear for trial the next day.
          Now we didn't have any papers, so the grapevine got around. We
could get news out within five minutes. You just called one of the
schools and tell the teachers and they would tell the children, and
they would tell the parents, or call the ministers, they would call
their people. It was very effective. So, the next day, people were
standing on the courthouse lawn. Students from Millsaps College (a
white Methodist school) decided they were going to march in sympathy
and meet the Jackson State students at the courthouse.
          The Millsaps students were turned around without incident. The
black_students were chased through a ravine that ran through the
city. They were sprayed with tea gas. At the courthouse the police
brought dogs, people were bitten and some were beaten. That was the
beginning. I think that prepared us for the actions of the Freedom
Rides in May of that same year.
          Long: What effect do you think the Freedom Rides
had on the consciousness of the people in Jackson?
          Young: Well, the whites were angry. The blacks
were complacent; we didn't feel involved at first. It was as if we
were onlookers. Gradually we became involved. Later in the summer
there were demonstrations by high_school students, trying to integrate
the parks and the playgrounds. When your own children are threatened,
you become actively involved. And that drew the entire community into
it.
          Long: What role did you play during the
demonstrations?
          Young: I started out as more of a secretary,
answering telephone calls. Arrests were happening so fast. Trying to
keep in touch with my husband and letting him know who was arrested
and where. And simultaneously, things began to break out in the
smaller communities throughout the state. He was running from here and
there trying to get people out on bail and raising bail.
          I began collecting toilet articles, dietary supplements for the
students in jail and began to draw many other people into the
movement. I would solicit things from the grocery stores and
drugstores and those people became interested and involved.
          During the middle of the summer, there were more than three-hundred
Freedom Riders. I gave telephone information to parents of the
out-of-state students who were arrested. The first ones who came in
were from colleges. So the colleges were calling--Cornell, Rutgers,
Oberlin. Then reporters came. We had them as far as Europe and
Canada. Then we began to receive them into our homes as well as the
religious people from the schools, the deans and that sort of
thing. Then lawyers were constantly coming in. In the late summer,
legal groups were sent down to relieve my husband and R. Jess Brown
and Carsie Hall. So they stayed at my house.
          It was not long before we began to get the threatening and obscene
phone calls. They would count down my husband's life. So that summer
we sent our children away.
          Later on, I began to write letters after the students were 

sent to
Parchman, the state penitentiary. They'd send one group in, another
would come out. They all bathed and dressed in our home and I'd feed
them. Some would leave right away; some would stay two or three
days. By talking to them, I found out the conditions in Parchman. So,
being a mother and knowing how worried parents were, I would write to
the parents.
          Long: Did this event happen before the so-called
"fairground incident?"
          Young: The "fairground incident" happened when
several hundred high_school students had a demonstration. There were
so many of them, the police took them down in trucks and placed them
on the fairgrounds. They were mostly local people who had been sitting
in at the municipal zoo, in the parks and swimming pools. They were
trying to integrate the recreational facilities. But they were just
caught up in all of the civil_rights activities. They would attend the
meetings we had almost nightly. They heard the appeals from the
churches for money. They had the natural exuberance of young
people. And they were about to get out of school that summer.
          The police put them in the cattle pens where the stock fairs were
held. It was hot. But, there again I think their youth stood them in
good stead. I doubt that older people could have stood that kind of
treatment, but the young_people are a little more resilient.
          During that period a lot of notable black figures came down, Medgar
brought them down for a weekend: fighters, singers, ball players. We
found homes for them in the city. We had mass meetings. The people in
the community, some of whom had never taken part, were thrilled to
say, "Well, Marguirette Belafonte is staying at my house." That made
them an integral part of the movement.
          One little sidelight. Gloster Current of the NMCP and I, just
talking one day, decided that there ought to be something we could do
to shake up the white community. During that time hootenanny's were
very popular. And they were about to have a big hootenanny that fall
at the Mississippi State Fair. So I wrote to Delta Sigma Theta, my
sorority, and asked them if they could put some pressure on the
booking agencies to ask these performers not to perform at the
Fair. So the hootenanny singers as well as several opera singers and
actors agreed not to perform. And the State Fair had a terrible time
trying to find entertainers. And this was all done with a letter to
Delta. It made the white community know that we had some strings to
pull outside of the state.
          Whenever I needed money I always wrote to Delta Sigma Theta, and
they always came through. For instance, when the farmers were thrown
off the land in the Delta for registering to vote and they moved into
tents, we found out that they were without winter clothes and that
they were needing food. The winter rains had set in. They didn't have
boots and raincoats and blankets and clothing. I called the national
office of Delta and they sent money to provide those things for
them.
          Long: Were there other community or social
institutions that were in support of the movement at that time?
          Young: Not at first. I became ill and couldn't
feed the people coming out of Parchman. My husband sent me to New
Orleans to rest. Then they fed them at the Episcopal church. Then a
group called Church Women United took over that role and I had only
the lawyers and reporters and the religious leaders to feed.
          Long: What about local colleges, what was their
role in social change in the sixties?
          Young: Tougaloo played a very important role,
and Campbell College, the AME school. When the students came back for
arraignment there were more than three hundred of them. They were
housed on the college campuses. Jackson State played no part in the
movement at all. Sadly enough, they were in the best position to have
used the Lynch street and the offices there as a laboratory, but they
did not.
          Long: Was this because Jackson State was a state
university, and because of President Reddix and his policy.
          Young: Probably so.
          Long: But, you had the full confidence of the
students at Jackson State?
          Young: Oh yes, I had taught many of their
mothers and fathers, so they knew me, and having had musical groups, I
performed all over the state in their churches, and in the recruitment
drives. Then, my husband had a very imposing manner, he was tall and
always well dressed, and he became an image for many of the
students. He went around to all the towns. It had been years since a
black had passed the bar. He was called on to give commencement
speeches, and speak at lodges and churches. So he was well known
throughout the state. So I was either simply "lawyer Young's wife" or
"Mrs. Young the music teacher."
          You have to remember that back in the thirties and forties there
were few positive black images in Mississippi, men or women, because
we had no newspapers, we had no TV, no radio. And I was surprised in
these late years to find out that we were models. So, they did listen
to me. And, I suppose anybody who teaches extra-curricular classes has
an entree to students' thoughts. I had a listening laboratory and they
would be listening and of course not realizing that when they were
talking to one another that I could hear, that they were shouting. So
I knew all about their private lives. I suppose a coach would have had
the same kind of influence.
          Long: So you were able, based on your
understanding of the larger society, to direct them in a way so that
they could stay alive and survive?
          Young: Yes. And then I had more intimate
knowledge as to what was happening legally by the lawyers being in my
house. And I think they had a little faith in my knowledge of what was
going on.
          Long: Were there particular incidents where
students might have been killed?

          Young: I remember they were about to demonstrate
one day. There had been a series of demonstrations in the city, and
down at the jail my husband had said the mood of the cops was just one
of anger. They were called in to extra duty. And I suppose without
extra pay. He had said, "I believe somebody's going to get killed
because the cops are very very angry."
          A student ran into my room about 5:30 that afternoon and told me
that the students were about to go out into the streets. The cops were
lined up on either side of Lynch street.
          I ran up to the president's office, where he and the business
manager were in conference. I told him what was happening and that we
should stop them cause some of them were going to get hurt. He said,
"I've done all that I can do, if they just want to do that it's up to
them." And they both got into the president's car and drove off.
          I ran up on the campus, and they were all massing themselves on the
dining hall steps. And I pushed my way to the front where they had a
microphone, and I began to shame the leaders, I said "You gonna stand
up here, and send those other people out in the streets." I asked the
other students, "Where is your head? You know they are gonna send you
out there first and see what happens to you and they might bring up
the rear."
          The students began to laugh. And they didn't go out.
          I came home one day from school and my son was sitting on the
porch, he and his friend. Now they were in high_school, and tears were
running down their cheeks. I asked him why he was crying. He said
"This is tear gas. Policemen are down the street shooting tear
gas."
          Well there was a barricade in front of my house because I lived at
the end of my street, and policemen were there. That was to keep
people from going into town. I never felt such anger before in my
life. It felt like my body had just blown up as a balloon. And I stood
out on the steps and tried to curse--I'm not a cursing woman. They
only thing I could think of was "damned stupid cops," and I said that
over-and over and over. I wanted them to shoot me or do something. I
was always fearful of what my own anger would do.
          Long: Who were some of the Jackson movement
figures, those persons who were in leadership from the early
movement?
          Young: Well, mostly the people who raised the
bail. Now of course, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP, was
the leader. And there was Rev. R.L.T. Smith and Houston Wells; and
Mr. Broadwater who is now a federal marshal. The ministers of course,
the ministerial alliance.
          Long: Was there a general strategy on the part
of the local leadership?
          Young: No, we took things as they came. That
first summer things were just popping out so fast, we tried to rise to
every occasion.
          Long: What about Medgar Evers and his basic
strategies? Did the NAACP on a local and state level seem to have a
basic approach for change?
          Young: I remember a strategy meeting at our
house a little later in the movement, trying to decide about putting
up somebody to run for office. And it. was decided at that time not to
try for any of the major offices or for the legislature, but to try to
put black_people in some of the small town offices where blacks had to
go daily. Blacks were treated so harshly in courthouses and by the
highway patrol and police that we felt it would be better to
concentrate in each city. For a long time we didn't have anybody in
the legislature and later, only one. But we were concentrating on the
minor offices. In Jackson we were asking, under Medgar's leadership,
for school crossing guards, for policemen and later for firemen.
          These were some of the demands given to the mayor. We had a mayor
then, Allen Thompson, who had been in office many years. The city was
controlled by him and his cohorts. We didn't have street lights in
black neighborhoods. Many of the streets were unpaved. At that time
there were even a few outdoor toilets.
          Most black_people would go to town only to get what they needed and
come back. The buses were segregated, but few people rode them. There
were certain stores where you could try on clothing, hat and shoes and
dresses and others that would let you take them home and try them
on. No restaurants were open, no lunch counters. But as I said, our
community was almost self-contained. There was seldom much need to go
downtown. Farish Street was our main street and West Jackson had
developed quite a few businesses. There were small restaurants and
shoe shops and things. I suppose this would have been found in most
Southern cities.
          Long: Would you talk about your remembrances of
Medgar Evers during this period?
          Young: Well, I remember him as a very gentle
kind of person. He was in and out of our house quite often, had many a
meal there. I knew his wife, Myrlie, fairly well, not as well as we
knew Medgar, and of course, we'd met the children. He was very
level-headed, not overly emotional. I thought he was a fine person,
and would have liked to have him for a friend even without the civil
rights movement.
          Long: When did you last see him before his
assassination?
          Young: It was the night that he was killed. I
had some lawyers staying at my house. Gloster Current was there and
Frank Reeves from Washington. I had been ill. Medgar came by, it must
have been about 10:30 or near 11:00 and said he was hungry because he
hadn't eaten all day. I told him that I didn't have any
leftovers--people were always 

bringing us a ham or turkey or
something. So he said, "Well, I'll just go on home."
          About that time the telephone rang. Gloster got it. My husband was
calling from the office and said that they had run out of mimeograph
paper. Medgar said he had some paper at the office; he'd go get it and
drop it by on his way home.
          The next time the telephone rang, it was Myrlie, and she just
screamed at me, "Oh, Medgar's been shot!"
          I really didn't think he'd had time to get home. But they say he
didn't stay long at the office. Must have been about a quarter of
twelve then.
          I called a friend whose son was a physician. She got so excited she
dropped the phone and I couldn't call anybody out. I ran next door to
the hotel and they got in touch with lack and the other lawyers, and
he said, "Don't go, we'll come by and pick you up." I didn't realize
until then that there might have been any danger to us.
          So we drove out to the house. The children had been taken across
the street to neighbors at once. They had just taken Medgar to the
hospital, so Barbara Morris and I stayed with Myrlie. We tried to keep
her busy, helping her gather up his things to take to the hospital.
          She kept walking. She'd walk outdoors, and there was this big pool
of blood, and I know she didn't know what she was doing, but she would
manage to step over the blood. She would not step in it.
          Barbara and I followed every footstep she made, then later the men
came to say that Medgar had died.
          That was one of the most horrible things during my lifetime cause I
never knew there was so much blood in a human body. I'd never seen
anybody killed before. And I didn't know that blood was thick. It was
just like somebody had poured a lot of jelly in the driveway.
          I didn't go to his funeral. But a lot of people gathered at my
house and I fed them. Houston Wells, in the furniture business'
brought a freezer to my house and several grocerymen filled it up with
food. The chef at Jackson State would periodically bake a large ham or
turkey for me.
          I remember so many people being in my house that day. They were
sitting everywhere, on the beds and everything. Eating from plates in
their laps. The phone rang and we heard that the students were
demonstrating downtown--this was after the memorial service. John
Doar, a lawyer with the Justice_Department, threw his plate down and
jumped in somebody's car and went down. He walked down the middle of
the street and calmed the students. At that point we all felt we
didn't want any more bloodshed.
          Long: What was the effect of Medgar's death on
people in Jackson?
          Young: There was a smoldering resentment. People
were angry. At first there was shock and then the smoldering kind of
anger set in.
          Things were happening concurrently. I suppose everything grew out
of Medgars Evers' death, and yet we had deaths following that.
          I believe the whites began to feel ashamed, and when they act for
the good, whether out of shame or fear or guilt, I think the results
are the same. There were many white_people who, I suppose, decried
what was happening all along, but they didn't come out. They were as
repressed as black_people. Then they began to get together in some of
the white churches. Began to identify each other much as we did. We
began to identify those who were really with the movement and those
who were not.
          We had a big dog and all the neighborhood children loved him. I was
surrounded on three sides by whites, but we had lived there so
long. We knew everybody. And my dog would go around and play with the
children, make his rounds, and the come back home.
          Early one morning a little white kid came up and said, "Mrs. Young,
dog catcher has your dog."
          There was an old white couple who lived around there and didn't
like children or dogs or anybody. They had caught the dog and had
pinned him up on their porch until the dog catcher came.
          I went around the corner and there was a police car. I was there by
the time the dog catcher arrived. When he ran to get the dog, I braced
myself. He drew back his hand as if he was going to hit me. My
daughter came around the corner and screamed, and of course that
brought people out. A policeman came up and wanted to know what the
trouble was. I thought they were taking me to jail. I said, "Okay, I
live right around the corner. I'll get my toothbrush and I'll come
with you."
          They just cruised along slowly while we were walking back with the
dog following us. They opened the car door and the dog jumped into the
police car. He liked to ride. I wanted to kill the dog.
          This was all before nine in the morning. I called my husband and he
went down and got the dog out. Later he told me that he went to the
chief of police and told him that he didn't want his family harrassed
because of his work. The chief told him nothing would happen to us
unless we committed a serious crime. We didn't tell the children,
because we could see our boys speeding and running stop lights just to
see if they would get picked up.
          So I had the assurance that they were not going to harrass
me. However, I did have FBI agents. I would go to the store and they
would appear from nowhere. That was the first time I realized that
they had black agents. We'd had them since Medgar's death because the
rumor had gone out that they were going to kill my husband, Reverend
Smith and the other leaders. Five of them were on a hit list.
          I'd go to the store and I'd look around and there'd be a person
standing. Our community is so small that we knew strangers. And they
looked like FBI people. Before I'd get home, there'd be another one
and then they would disappear.

          I guess I was fearful, apprehensive, but not anymore than I'd been
when Jack would go out in the little towns. He had a couple of murder
cases where I just knew he was going to get killed before he got
back. I guess that sort of prepared me. Then we went over to
Birmingham and I talked with the black lawyers' wives over there. I
admired them. Mrs. [unclear]ores'
house had been bombed. I think that helped me to at least put up a
show of being fearless. But after a while you get so that you aren't
afraid of the fear.
          
            The following edited interview with Ms. Aurelia Norris
Young (born 1915 in Knoxville, Kentucky) chronicles her involvement in
the 1960s' Jackson, Mississippi freedom struggle. Ms. Young is
currently president of the J.C. Maxwell Group, minority operators of
WMPR-FM, a Mississippi public radio station scheduled to begin
broadcasting within the next few weeks from Tougaloo,
Mississippi. Worth Long of the SRC's Civil Rights Radio Project
continues in this interview a series documenting the modern civil
rights movement in the Deep South.
          
        
