Headline is from Bob Fertig at Democrats.com. He writes: In order to trash Cindy, [FOX's John] Gibson called on Ira Stoll, editor of the rightwing New York Sun and author of “Cindy Sheehan’s Crowd.” Stoll attacked Cindy for working with “extreme groups and individuals”: Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out all [...]
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William J. Douthard (aka “Meatball”), Jan. 6, 1947 – Jan. 4, 1981
I first mentioned William Douthard in passing here. At the right is a flier from a civil rights rally I think my father organized, where William spoke (click on the image to enlarge). William Douthard was a student demonstration leader in Birmingham, Alabama, which was where he and my father met. To many in the [...]
p.s.
Sorry it’s been so quiet over here. Had a bad cold last week and was also working on some writing for print publication (more on that soon). Over Memorial Day weekend we visited my mother, and I spent some more time with my father’s papers. I brought a bunch of new papers back home, some [...]
Delmar to Bombingham (6) — COMING FORWARD I
On Saturday morning, June 22, 1963, at around 9:00 a.m., A. D. King answered his front door and found Roosevelt Tatum. He was crying and saying he had something in his heart he wanted to tell. Tatum came inside and immediately noticed Paul Greenberg, the only white man among the dozen or more people in the house. Tatum had overcome his fear and wanted to say what he saw. When Tatum explained what he’d seen six weeks earlier, King asked him to talk to the FBI. Tatum agreed and King called the FBI office to say that a man was at his home who saw persons responsible for the bombing.
From Delmar to Bombingham (5) — THE BOMBING
From where he sat on the steps, Tatum could see Birmingham Police Car 49 coming down Avenue H from 13th Street towards 12th Street. The patrol car turned left onto 12th Street, cut its headlights and rolled to a stop across the street at 721 12th Street Ensley, the residence of A. D. and Naomi King. From where she sat, behind one of the porch posts, Miller couldn’t see the car pull up. Tatum whispered not to move or speak. To the officers he was invisible on the shadowy steps. (RT, 15-16, 24-25; AGM1, 17-19, 20)
From the passenger side, a police officer got out from Car 49, walked around the back of the car and across the Kings’ lawn. He seemed to be tossing something near the porch. The officer ran back to the passenger door and got back into Car 49. As the car pulled away the driver tossed something out of his window and onto the Kings’ lawn. The officers weren’t yet three houses away, when the first bomb exploded. (RTD, 3; RT, 15-16, 24-25)
Cindy Adams’ Show Business Report On AGVA’s Show In Birmingham, Ala.
An estimated 20,000—colored and white—brought their own bridge chairs, camp chairs and backyard chairs in what was tagged locally, “Seats for Freedom.” Those without chairs rented them on the grounds for 25c. Or brought pillows. Or squatted on the grass. . . .
An additional 45-minute delay was caused by the late arrival of Ray Charles. His bus couldn’t proceed to the stage because opening the gate would have meant thousands could pour in helter skelter. Near mayhem was averted by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who quickly stepped forward toward the helmeted policemen on duty, he formed a human chain to stem the onrush. It wasn’t needed. His presence was enough.
AGVA Salute to Freedom in the New York Times
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Aug. 6 (UPI)—An integrated rally, to raise money to send Negroes to Washington for a massive integration march, ended abruptly last night when the makeshift stage partly collapsed.
Ray Charles Helped Integrate Birmingham
The Ray Charles moment in the blogosphere has mostly come and gone, but this blog dwells a little more in the past than most, so before I get back to other things I’ve got to do a little bit about Ray Charles.
More And Yet Still More
Last Thursday I had the honor and the pleasure of receiving and email from Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. As I mentioned in Part 3 of From the Delmar Archive to Bombingham, Alabama, her excellent book contains one of the only published accounts of the Roosevelt Tatum episode which I have been writing about. Her book had been extremely important for me as I try to understand the the Tatum story.
From the Delmar Archive to Bombingham, Alabama (Part 4)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 On July 3, 1963, Roosevelt Tatum was interviewed another time by FBI Agents in Birmingham, Alabama. In this meeting Tatum signed a statement recanting his previous allegations regarding the role of the Birmingham Police in the bombing of A. D. and Naomi King’s home. Here is an excerpt from [...]
It’s Almost Passover
As usual, while I’m here at my mom’s house, I’m sifting through the documents and objects that fill the house. I’ve been looking through some of the documents from Dad’s work on Proportional Representation (PR) in New York City. In the late 1960s, there was a move, ultimately unsuccessful, to bring PR back as the method of electing the New York City Council members. PR was the method used for NYC Council elections from 1938 to 1949. In the early 1970s there was a successful campaign to change the New York City School Board Elections to PR. Both of these efforts were spearheaded by my father, who was Executive Director of the New York Proportional Representation Committee from 1969-1971 and Associate Director of the Special Unit for School Board Elections of the Board of Elections in the City of New York from 1970-1973. The work that he did around the NYC School Board elections was enormous. He used to refer to his 1973 testimony at the New York State Education Department Hearings on Community School Board Elections as his master’s thesis. (For a description of the kind of PR that he worked to institute in NYC go here or here.) Before I can write fully about my dad’s involvement in PR for NYC, there are many documents here in Delmar that I need to read and a there’s a lot more that I need to learn about this bit of NYC political history. Still I’m going to post a little from what I’ve been reading while I’m here on my Passover visit.
From the Delmar Archive to Bombingham, Alabama (Part 3)
. . . on June 22, 1963 at around 9:00 AM, Roosevelt Tatum appeared at A. D. and Naomi King’s house. By Tatum’s own account, “I was crying and I told Rev. King that I had something in my heart and I wanted to tell somebody. . . . I have had this thing on my conscience since the date it happened, and I wanted to tell somebody about it so I would feel better”
The Following Description Was Obtained From Personal Observation and Interrogation
Name: ROOSEVELT TATUM
Race: Negro
Sex: Male
Address: 1109 Avenue J, Ensley, Birmingham, Alabama
Date of Birth: February 18, 1924
From the Delmar Archive to Bombingham, Alabama (Part 2)
I’d always known he did Civil Rights work for the SCLC in Birmingham, but the only concrete thing I’d ever heard about was the benefit concert he helped organize at Miles College (more on that later). I’m pretty sure Dad was the first person I ever heard call the city Bombingham, but he never said anything about his involvement in the investigation of one of the bombings there—not to me and not to my mother.
FOIA / FOIPA Clarification
A friend of mine pointed out that in my Innaugural post, my link to the National Security Archive for information about the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts (FOIPA) opens a page titled How to Make a FOIA Request.
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