Interview w/ Mr.

Saunders

The organization and agency grew out of Septima Clark, before COBRA started she
was a part of it, got me to where I am. She taught on Johns Island where I lived also
with Esau Jenkins who was very close to her, they started to freedom school, he
started it and got Septima involved.
There was the strike in 1969 where Charleston was closed off a hundred days I
mean, curfews and national guards and all of that stuff, and Septima Clark was a
part of that, that was when to state of South Carolina refused to pay minimum wage
to it'd workers. At the medical college where the blacks worked they had to eat their
lunches in the boiler room and stuff like that, it was really just unbelievable. And
they said that was the right thing to do and they forced a strike and they had it
going on for one hundred days. Got into Nixon cabinet, that's how it got solved. But
I was the one who led that and Septima.
It's a lot of history that a lot of folk knows nothing about, and the thing that scares
me most, that's why I'm interested in what you guys are doing because everybody
that's doing history or talking about it, they're starting right from where they are
and they don't go back to how we got here, and if youre not going to be looking at
where we started from it doesn't make any sense doing it at all. And you young
people are inheriting some stuff that y'all are going to have to work fast to make
sure the people don't destroy what was built for you and we've got some crazy
people in charge of so much of everything in government, and that's scary, *laughs*
I'm serious it's a very scary thing. What I do most with my life is, we do history but
also political education.
Governor McNair and Ide Princeton Newman who was one of those leaders with
Septima Clark and we did a lot of stuff together, so they're all connected.
Back when the strike, it went on for a hundred days. *points to picture and laughs*
yeah that's me in the middle I had some hair and everything back then in those
days. That's Esau Jenkins on that side and Father Henry Brown on the other side.
The most important part of what we got, and I used to have this in my window
downstairs, *motions to picture on the wall and reads* we shall not always plant
while others reap and that's what we were trying to do, is make sure we can reap
some of the benefit of what we plant, not an easy thing to do.
Mr. Saunders: what does this mean to you guys? *points to picture of a black man
standing next to and looking at a sign that says colored restroom
Erin: when segregation was around, facilities and other things for African Americans
weren't equal

Mr. Saunders: Yes you are right. The most important thing I am saying to this, this is
colored restroom, meaning colored women and black men went in the same
restroom. But whites had white women's restroom and white men's restroom. But
the colored all went in the same one. You can see the insulting that went on with
that whole system. They had in that same area, they had colored water and white
water, and we used to come from down somewhere, some of my friends would be
with me we'd be going through one of the department stores and I would drink
some of the white water, everybody would run. Because you can get killed, I'm
serious, but you could get killed just drinking some white water because you are
breaking a very serious law. And I would end up by myself, you know, I got wounded
when I was 16 it was crazy, I've done a lot of dumb things in my life.
But this again was the progressive club on johns island, was there with Mrs. Clark
and Bernice Robinson and Esau, this is Esau's van there and I want you to
remember that because now the Smithsonian has taken that so that whole thing is
in the Smithsonian. And they're now trying to redo the progressive club, hurricane
Hugo tore it down. We not only built a place to teach but there was no place on the
island for blacks to play basketball or skate so we built the progressive club where
kids could play basketball and skate that was large enough and that was in 63.
That's where most of the freedom school teaching went on. At first we bought the
school, the elementary school that I went to, which is a three room school, no
electricity or anything, and we bought that school. They were trying to avoid
integration so they built a better school for blacks so they could say separate but
equal was working and then we bought the progressive club had electricity put into
it put restrooms in it and all that stuff and that's where the teaching started. We did
this in 63 but in 56 Septima Clark was the leading role model in most of us. One of
the things I want y'all look at as yall go through everything, everything you study
will about Septima as such a neat and such a sweet person but she was a militant
person she could be a very mean person without ever being nasty she could cut you
with words. I was with her in 1959 when they arrested her in Monteagle, Tennessee
and they came I mean they took her arms, they put a hurting on her and I was there
and I said something that time when they were hurting Mrs. Clark. They said Mrs.
Clark was breaking the law because she had a table outside where she had knives
and soda and stuff and she had a note saying that you could make a donation if you
wanted but there would be no charge if you wanted to take something. They had
said she was selling stuff illegally. Because of this they took about 20 something
acres of property from them three big building and all of the money from Tennessee.
All of this was part of the wrecking they had done. And then they moved from
Monteagle, Tennessee up to Market, Tennessee all of the property was taken away
so they had to move. One of the most important things for me and Mrs. Clark was
that we wanted to make sure we pick up the places with poverty and folk liked to
sorta make that whole thing that we were fighting over race and we were able to
prove very real that it was about class. Most all the struggle had been about class
when it gets down o the bottom it gets to be race. But as we spent time up in the

mountains in Appalachia to see the troubles and suffering of white people as well.
It's unbelievable up in the coal mines all the problems with water and we saw that
poor whites really did suffer and nobody talks about that. Poverty really is a disease
that a lot of people are suffering from.

Erin: What was Septima Clark like as a person, knowing her on more of a personal
level?
Mr. Saunders: She was a very easy going person, a person who really cared so
much about the community. One of my daughters was going to go to the College of
Charleston and I had no way to afford a place for her to live and Septima told me to
get a cot and bring it to her house and put it in her bedroom and let my daughter
stay there. You can't get no better than that. She was giving up her own privacy for
my daughter to go to school and my daughter went to the college of Charleston and
got her masters from the medical university, but that went through Septima Clark
and her kindness and she did that for so many young people. She was always
available always available to help people. The way that they treated her, wouldn't
give her a retirement because she was part of the NAACP and when they fired her
she had been teaching for 30 years, and they wouldn't even let her withdraw a
retirement. So what we were able to do after that, she went to Tennessee but when
she came back, we were able to make the state government give her retirement.
We were able to make the state government give it to her not monthly but give her
a lump sum, two or three lump sums so she got a good bit of her money back. But
she really suffered a lot but you wouldn't find anything in her writing or anything of
her complaining. She complained some about the black educators because she
didn't think the black educators had enough guts to stand up for what was right and
what they needed to do, and she was right on top of that.
Caroline: So with them holding her retirement had a lot to do with her activism,
them trying to punish her?
Mr. Saunders: Yeah that's the only reason they did it. I got the law from when they
passed the law that anybody that relied on the NAACP could not work for the state
or local government and thats how they fired her because she belonged to the
NAACP and she would not give that up. She was a really strong, strong person. They
arrested her and she never cried out or say they hurt me she was able to take
suffering. What I'm interested in and even with you young people is that not to let
those things, stuff that she and others did die and go back to the way it was before
and it's headed back that way today in this country, it's going back that way very
fast.
Erin: That's what we're trying to do with this National History Day project, even in
the history books people know about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King but then it
gets to Septima Clark and so many people don't know who she is.

Mr. Saunders: She went with Dr. King the day he got his Nobel Peace Prize; she was
with him, that's who he took with him. One of my real suffering problems is that I
had at a point when they did that stuff to Mrs. Clark at Highlander and some other
arrests and stuff they did and went through our where we were living and stuff like
that, and that's when I decided I couldn't do nonviolent anymore. And that's how I
sorta got out of that. Everybody except Septima got mad at me and what I started
to deal with some folks that I got in contact with I started fighting for and doing it
for human rights in 1959-1960. So I got in with a real bad reputation and even Esau
Jenkins and a group of those folk had a problem with me because if you weren't
willing to get beat up and say and let me sing to you while you beat me then you
were not a good person. And I couldn't do that anymore, so they all turned on me,
but Septima stayed with me.
Caroline: Which goes back to what you said about her being a caring gracious
person.
Mr. Saunders: Yeah she's cool and I don't think she ever tried to make any money I
don't find any belief that she was about making money.
Erin: What do you think was maybe one of her greatest contributions to the civil
rights movement? What do you think Mrs. Clark brought to it that was needed?
Mr. Saunders: I think that she had the strength to stand up against so many difficult
situations. I remember being with her in Chicago in 1967 at the new politics
convention there. She was able to take about fifteen black young men, and say now
here is what you are not going to do and this is how it's going to be, and that's what
she did. She had such a strong belief in herself. I don't know anybody who's been
successful in life that didn't have an ego. Everybody that I know that has really been
good at what they did had an ego. And they believed that they were good.