Douglas Ades (’69) is a long time supporter of both Union and the Poverty Initiative, serving on our Poverty Initiative Trustees Committee. Recently we learned of his incredible experiences and involvement with the Civil Rights movement. Below is a selection of some of Doug’s recollections. We are certain that you will enjoy reading this remarkable eye-witness story from a truly momentous time. We hope these reflections will serve to remind and inspire us. Leaders like Doug, and his wife Ela Dec, are critical supporters of Union and of the Poverty Initiative. Side-by-side we walk in our long haul towards justice.
-The Poverty Initiative
Mississippi in the 60s
It was a troubled time in the early 60s. Freedom Riders going to Mississippi being dragged out of buses and beaten. Sitdown protests at lunch counters. Dogs and fire hoses loosed on peaceful marchers. And the right-wingers (of which I’d recently been a part) were saying that the problem in America was apathy.
It was clear to me that the action was in the South and that the only way to overcome apathy was to go there. It was also clear to me that even conservatives would support registering all people who were eligible to vote.
In 1965 Linda and I connected with a group from the Congregational Church in Claremont that was going to Mississippi to do voter registration. (The small group included some very interesting people, one of whom later became the Ambassador to South Africa).
We piled into our Dodge station wagon (a veritable boat), along with Linda’s grandparents (to be dropped off in Colorado), a college student and a seminary student from Claremont.
After a brief visit with relatives in Colorado we plowed on to the Deep South.
As we neared Mississippi the fact that the car had no air conditioning became evident. The closer we got, the hotter it became and the August humidity stifled us. It may get hot in California but when 90 percent humidity meets 90 degrees of heat it’s a totally new experience for a native Californian who had never been farther east than Colorado.
We arrived at Mt. Beulah College near Edwards, Mississippi, and were assigned to a dorm room a little larger than a telephone booth. We were greeted by a few white students, several white adults and some beautiful, local black people. There was excitement and fear in the air. The first night was a total surprise because neither the temperature nor the humidity changed. And the sound of the cicadas was deafening. It induced an eerie feeling right out of a Poe short story.
The first day we had a group meeting of about 40 people deciding how we might best make an impact. Several people mentioned that registering people in Raymond, MS could only happen on certain days so that idea was put off until the next week. Toward the end of the discussion someone suggested that there was a swimming pool in the little town of Edwards, but it was only for whites so we should integrate it. There were several in support but one man from Claremont said, “We have a lot of room on this campus. Why don’t we build one here”? There was a look of ‘are you out of your mind?’ on many faces but after more discussion there was agreement that we could raise the money from contacts in California and we should go ahead with the project.
Well, as in “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, ‘a promise made is a debt unpaid’, so the next morning we began digging in the Mississippi sun. I had been working in construction that summer and was in great shape but was no match for that sun. I don’t know how people could chop cotton from the time they called “can to can’t” (can see to can’t see) in that weather, but they had done it for generations.
That night we ate dinner in the cafeteria, cooked by Jake the chef, a wonderful human being but with a unique talent for making anything and everything he touched taste ghastly. After ‘dinner’, and I use that term loosely, we all piled into cars and drove maybe 30 miles to the black section of a town where there was to be a rally of civil rights workers.
The little church seated probably 50 people at most but civil rights workers had come from several surrounding towns creating a crowd of some 300. The air was electric. Many of the black people, and some whites, had been arrested and beaten by the police and a few had relatives who’d been killed by the police. A black man stood up in front and began to speak in that melodic way that only black preachers can. He got ‘amens, and ‘dat’s rights’ from the pulsing crowd and the energy built. Then a large black woman stood up and began singing, “O, Freedom. O, Freedom. O, Freedom Over Me”, we all joined in and the place began to rock. The walls nearly burst with enthusiasm and hope. Another person spoke but the words didn’t matter. The MUSIC of freedom rang out from the place. Sweat, and tears of joy mingled with “We Shall Overcome”. By the time it was over, some two hours later, we all had the feeling that anything was possible.
On the way back, because my car was filled with black and white people, we were chased by the police. I was worried they would follow us all the way back to the college but at the county line they turned around. The local people said that the police observed the city and county lines without fail. (I was so pleased to learn they at least observed that law!) On a later trip back from Vicksburg I had to turn that big station wagon into the cotton fields and drive with lights out in order to evade the state troopers who were in hot pursuit.
Some time during the second week the group discovered there was the possibility of registering voters at the courthouse in Raymond. But, because some of us were up to our armpits in building an Olympic-size swimming pool, I allowed a person to take my station wagon to bring voters to register while we worked on the pool. When they returned that evening we all dined on Jake’s ‘exceptional’ cuisine while those who had gone to register voters regaled us with tales of the roadblocks and threats they had encountered……….ultimately registering not a single voter!
The next morning I needed to go into town to get something for the pool construction. I opened the car door and smelled something a little strange but put it aside in my mind, until I sat down and the seat covers disintegrated. I got out and realized that my legs were beginning to burn. Suddenly I realized that the ‘welcoming committee’ in Raymond had doused the inside of the car with acid.
The Meredith March, 1966
Toward the mid-‘60s some in the civil rights movement began to question whether non-violence was the best way to achieve the goals of equal opportunity. These people began to cry “black power”, waving clenched fists and scaring the be-Jesus out of many white people. In 1966 James Meredith, who was the first black person to be admitted to the University of Mississippi (1962) and was by then a law student at Columbia U. in New York, began the “March Against Fear” to register voters in Mississippi. The march was to go from Memphis to Jackson, MS. On the second day he was shot and seriously wounded. Civil rights leaders joined in the 220 mile march, which became the Meredith March. I joined the march in Mississippi. It was unbelievably hot and humid and as we marched through white communities not a drop of water was offered. I was walking with a young black woman next to me and I heard, “Hey, is that nigger your girlfriend?”
We marched for mile after mile and finally reached the Capitol in Jackson, which was ringed by armed National Guard with stainless steel helmets, daring us to come even close to them. On a few occasions, the Guard broke ranks and used their rifle butts on marchers, but we stayed in line rather than run. Next to the Capitol there was a stage and the speakers and singers began to encourage all of us with “We Shall Not Be Moved”. Martin Luther King, Jr., Peter, Paul and Mary, Marlon Brando and so many others who are now history. It was a moment!
End of the Meredith March
Jackson, MS Capitol, ringed with armed National Guardsmen
Harlem, 1967-69
I arrived in New York’s Upper West Side of Manhattan in August of 1966 to become a student at Union Theological Seminary, affiliated with Columbia University. My first fieldwork assignment was working as the Assistant Minister to the Jazz Musicians of New York. I later named it “Bar-hopping for Jesus”. It was a fascinating way to break into the big city.
At the beginning of the summer of 1967 I began my summer work with the Street Academies in Harlem. Harlem was clearly no Mississippi. Almost all black people in Mississippi were warm and welcoming to me. Harlem was frightening. Ghettos all over the country had burned in the previous summers and Harlem felt like a tinderbox that could explode at any moment. I got used to being called “whitey” and “cracker” and realized that they had an anger that was right at the surface, ready to boil over.
The Street Academy program was set up in several storefronts throughout Harlem where educational activities were taking place with street kids, most of them dropouts. I somehow ended up working as the only white person in a former gang of heroin users and dealers. They were older (30s-40s) and all ex-offenders. (I later discovered that they were the street gang that Claude Brown was a member of and wrote about in his book, “Manchild in the Promised Land”.) The man Claude referred to at a Senate Committee hearing as the real manchild, Arthur Dunmeyer, (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,836284,00.html) was the leader of the gang that had now decided to help kids who were using heroin. Most of them were in various stages of “reform”. We set up the “dope fiend” street academy.
Arthur was massive, dark, handsome, impressive and scary. He had been in most maximum security prisons in NY and had earned his first money at the age of 9 stealing from the pants of the man who was having sex in the next room with his mother, a prostitute. Everyone respected Arthur, not only out of fear, but he was smart. I remember one time there was a chess set sitting in our little detox center. He asked me if I’d like to play and I said I’d love to. In about four moves he had me mated.
I said, “Let’s play another”. This time it took him probably eight moves.
He looked and me and laughed and said, “You didn’t ‘spect no niggah to beat yo ass, did ya, white boy?”.
I said, “No, it really surprised me. Where did you learn to play like that?
He replied, “Whatchoo think people in jail do?”
It was the first of many lessons I learned about expectations versus reality.
We cooperated with a hospital in Queens so I often drove the guys there and went on the “junkie floor” with them. Once again I was the only white person and it was a little scary at times. One day one of the detoxing junkies decided to challenge me. I was about to go up the winding, internal stairs when he approached me and started calling me names. A crowd gathered and their anticipation urged him on. I stood quietly, sometimes asking, “Why do you want me?”, but being ready to counter an onslaught of blows. All of a sudden, from the top of the stairs came “HEY!” We all froze. It was Omar, a 6’ 4”, 260 pound, former bodyguard of Malcolm X, and one of our gang. Omar yelled at the man and pointed to me, “Dis man my bruthah. He blacker den you. Now I’m a man a peace so if ya wants peace, den walk ya own way. But if ya wants some shit, den come up dem stairs and I’ll kick outcha kidneys!” The man shrank away, the crowd dissipated, and I wondered how soon I could find some unsoiled underwear.
Harlem 1969-80
In 1969 I went to work for Chemical Bank to set up their Urban Affairs Department. The bank gave me the capacity to take a few young bankers and train them in how to do banking and grant-making in the streets of Harlem and, later, other ghettos of the City. Chemical Bank’s Streetbankers ultimately became an internalized part of the way the bank conducted its business.
