Newspapers / Black Ink (Black Student … / Sept. 9, 1977, edition 1 / Page 11
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Page 3 Chavis Made More Dedicated By Prison Experience (continued on Page 2> tween Asheville and Raleigh. We had what we called organizing train ing sessions. And I found myself, every night, sometimes twice a day, in different churches. Most minis ters say they get a “calling”. . . Q. A bolt from the blue? CHAVIS: If anything, I called the Lord, a reversed kind of call. I’ve got to be involved in the church be- cause that’s where my people are. I Christianity hasTeenTseTT^r* white folk to oppress us. We didn’t have no prohleins with Christian theology per se. ii > iiist how it was being inicrprcicd hy white folk So we souyhi lo liniiy about a true interpretiiiinn p.mi- cularly one that \\t !d lo u le vant for Bhick pt i.ple fiifiiiiicd in jelieTe in God. Prior to that time I had felt that the church was not be ing used properly in terms of being a medium in the structure to bring about some liberation. But I found that it could be, through King. The church could properly find its right place in the community. And so I dedicated my life to follow in the footstep of King, to keep his dream alive. Then I also made a committment to the Christian ministry. I am a Christian minister but I recognize the values of dealing with all reli gions. Islam. I think we have a lot to learn from our Islamic brothers. Not the dispute they are presently going through, but in terms of their self-help programs for the community. What Elijah Muham mad did in instilling Black pride in the community, I think, was very positive. One of the things I’ve been doing is trying to trace not only our bio logical roots to our ancestors, but to trace our cultural and religious roots. As Black people, we’ve always been a very religious people. The theoiy that religion came out of the West is incorrect. For West ern civilization, religion is a tool that’s been manipulated for capital ist and imperialist ideals. I found that some of the founders of Christ ianity itself were Blacks and Afri cans. St.Augustine was a Black man who wrote part of the Canons of Catholicism which lead to Protes tantism. What I’m trying to say is that I found myself comfortable in the Black church; prodding the existing churches toward where they should be in terms of what’s written in the gospel. . . in terms of the experi ences of Black folk. So far. I’ve been successful. That’s another reason I’m in jail now. It was around a Black church that I went to Wilmington. It was in a Black church that we were at tacked. Q. That leads to the next question. Exactly what did you hope to achieve when you went to Wilming ton in 1971? CHAVIS: Between sixty-nine, se venty and seventy-one, the South was going through what Boston and Louisville, Kentucky are going through now — desegration of the schools. Most school districts, al most every one in North Czirolina resisted the orderly integration of schools. AU of my high school years were in a Black school system. There was no integration when I graduated from high school; there was talk about integration but there wasn’t integration. So the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed various suits in various counties. New Han over County, where Wilmington is, is one of these counties. However, whites used our NAACP Legal Defense suits to bring about integration and turn the repression back on the commu nity. What I mean by that is they went in and closed or demoted all the Black high schools. There were only two institutions that Black people controlled at the time, that was the school and the church. They were stepping on some sensi tive turf when talking about taking our schools or demoting or degrad ing them. In Wilmington it was Willison High School, a very famous high school. Meadowlark Lemon, Althea Gibson and a lot of famous athletes came out of there. Blacks should be very sensitive about this school situation, but they didn t turn to violence. The Black community, be ing very law abiding went on with the desegration order. They put their kids on the buses and went out to the suburbs and tried to go to school. What happened was, white folk said, “No. We don’t want niggers out here in Wilming ton, not in the suburbs trying to go to school.” The precipitating incident was on January 15, which was King’s birth day when Black students wanted to have memorial services at New Han over High School. The school offi cials refused so the students went out at lunchtime and had a non-vio lent vigil around the American flag pole, sang “We Shall Overcome”, and attempted to go back to class. But they were attacked by some vi gilantes. Now when I go outside of North Carolina and talk about the Ku Klux Klans and vigilantes, p>eople say, “Well, wow! Is that still going on?” Q. Did Wilmington surpass all your expectations in terms of racism and repression? CHAVIS: Yes. Now I’m from Ox ford where there s a Klan element in Granville county; they still bum a few crosses, wear a few hoods. But they usually try to hide it. But down there in Wilmington these white folk were bold with their rac ism. They came on out up front and said “if you niggers keep meet ing over there at that church (Greg ory Congregational Church was the Black church where the students were meeting) we re going to wipe you out.” I wasn t going to submit to their threats. The people down there took the threats seriously. But sure enough they started meeting at the church. The students decided to boycott after the January 15 inci dent. They made a call to Reverend Leon White in Raleigh, who was my director at the time, and asked for assistance. So I was sent to Wilmington to give organizational assistance and help the students meet their de mands. That they be treated fairly in class; they were made to sit in the back of all classrooms. They were taking a typing class and weren’t allowed to use the type writers. Stuff like that, just racism. Q. This was in 1971 in Wilmington, North Carolina? CHAVIS: Right, 1971 in Wilming ton. They couldn’t be on the cheer- leading squad because of the color of their skin. White male teachers would harass Black female students. It was a kind of intolerable situa tion. So 1 got them to put all this down in Black and white. One of the things I try to do when I go into a community is exhaust the existing channels. I know they do not work but I try to exhaust them anyway. Set up the meetings with the school board; give demands to the city council and county com missioners, so they’ll know what’s going down so they won’t clsum out of ignorance they don’t know ' what’s wrong with Black folk. They refused all the demands. A city-wide, county-wide boycott was called. It was very effective. It was one of the most effective boycotts I’ve seen in this state. Where not only were the students very suppor tive but the students’ parents were supportive of the students. Q. So the Black community was very supportive? CHAVIS: Right. It really came to gether. And it became necessary to have meetings every night, some times twice a day. We set up a li beration school in the church to keep them off the streets. I feit it was very dangerous to have the stu dents out in the streets — four, five hundred, six hundred students. Because that church became a fo cal point it became a point of threats for the vigilantes. Sure enough, in broad day light, they would come over there and start shooting. Several people were wounded. As you know, in ’71 Richard Nixon and John Mitchell were going around hollering “law and order”. We were asking for law and order and couldn’t get any. So the law and order thing was just a farce to put repression on Blacks. Q. You actually went to the exist ing authorities in that town and said “we want law and order”? CHAVIS. Right. The chief of police down there was named Williamson at the time. I went to him several times, along with the pastor of the church, and actually begged for po lice protection. This was in 1971 before the actual racial warfare broke out. AH of it could have been avoided if they had called a curfew or if they had protected the church. But they chose not to because many of the law enforcement offi cers in Wilmington were themselves members of the Ku Klux Klan and were members of a new organiza tion started in Wilmington called the Rights of White People (ROWP). This was a para-milit£iry, white supremists organization with high-powered weapons, a lot of ammunition, and a lot of guts. They literally shot up the Black community so the Black folk whose property was being shot up decided to defend themselves. Thats when law and order came. There was no law and order as long as the white vigilantes were shooting up the Black community. When Black people decided to de fend themselves against these at tacks, then the police moved in and attacked the Black community, too. So it was a whole set-up kind of thing. “It’s a miracle, actually, that I’m alive or any of the Wilmington 10 are alive, because they tried to kill all of the Black community in that area. But luckily, thanks to God and other powers, the Black com munity survived the attack. For four days in Wilmington, it was something that probably had never happened in this century. There was a full-scaled racial war going on. Q. Do you feel that there was an active “get Chavis” element from the time you arrived and made your presence known in Wilmington? CHAVIS: Oh yes. Particularly in the established media down there. In front-page headlines I was re ferred to as an “Outside Agitator”. Automatically their problem went from their own racism to me - “Get Chavis”. I was their problem. A group of businessmen in Wil mington even raised ten thousand dollars for somebody to kill me. This was reported to me by the lo cal law enforcement. They said. “Chavis, we have this information so you’d better leave town.” I said, “If you have this in formation that somebody raised money for somebody to kill me, that’s conspiracy to murder. Why don’t you go and arrest those folks?” They said, “No, we can’t do that unless they, in fact, murder you.” So I thanked them for their information; but 1 wasn’t going to let that threat drive me out of Wil mington. One of the things 1 found in working in a lot of communities is when things get hot you can’t leave. I didn’t have a history of running out on folks and I wasn’t going to do it in Wilmington. In fact, after the racial warfare was over with, I moved back to Wilmington and stayed all that year and founded a church in Wilmington called the First African Temple of the Black Messiah. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — the person most influencial in Chavis' life.
Black Ink (Black Student Movement, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
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Sept. 9, 1977, edition 1
11
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