Question:
Would you say a little bit about how you got involved with CRS?

Answer:
I was a part of the group that conceptualized CRS before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I was director of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations and we were trying to get the Civil Rights Act structured and passed going all the way back to 1962. A group was meeting in Washington to conceptualize how we could get an act passed, given what it contained. I was assigned to two workshop groups. One was the Community Relations Service, although we didn't call it that at the time. We simply called it Civil Rights, or we would call it the Human Relations Groups, or that kind of thing. I was also assigned to the EO [Equal Opportunity] workshop group that finally came forth with EEOC, which is Title VII. So we picked our brains for two days, deciding if we could get that passed. And then, the March on Washington forced Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (As you remember, the March on Washington was in 1963, and it forced Congress to pass the act.) Before then, various bills had been presented and there were various notions on what the act ought to look like. Lyndon Johnson had an idea of something like the Community Relations Service long before he was President. And now, he was President and he was pushing for it to happen. When it was finally passed, that's Title X of the Civil Rights Act, it didn't quite look like what we had envisioned. We had envisioned it having subpoena power, cease and desist power, and mediation and conciliation, but it didn't pass Congress that way. Now, about how I got involved in the profession and all that. After the Civil Rights Act was passed, they used the Commission on Civil Rights to present a series of hearings on the Civil Rights Act to make officials aware of what was contained in the Civil Rights Act. Civil rights activists, school board members, and members of city councils in Arkansas, mayors, and these kind of people were invited to come hear what the act meant. For the opening session, they found out at the last minute, though I knew all the time, there was not a single black on the program. The guy who used to be with the Civil Rights Commission, who later went to HUD, by the name of Sam Simmons called me and said, "Ozell?" I said, "Yes?" He said, "You know that we're opening this big conference in Little Rock tomorrow?" I said, "Yes, I know." And he said, "There's not a single black in the opening session." I said, "I know that, too. I don't know what you all were thinking, but there's not a single black on the program." He said, "You've got to speak." I said, "I've got to speak? About what?" And Sam said, "I really don't give a damn. Just speak." I said, "Sam, it's unfair that you've been planning this for six weeks and you've got all of the speakers. The governors' going to be there, and he's going to speak, and the congressman's going to speak and one of the senators is speaking. Now, you call me at the last minute and tell me that I must join in, now that's not equal opportunity." He said, "Oh hell, Ozell. Number one, you know you can do it, and I know you can do it. And number two, you know if I'd have told you six weeks ago that you still would have spoken extemporaneously. Now don't tell me that, I know you can, and I want you to speak." I said, "Okay." He said, "Fifteen minutes." So I spoke. There was a guy there from CRS, it was just getting started and after I had spoken, they invited me to join the staff of CRS.

Question:
Was this Ben Holman?

Answer:
No, Ben Holman was not director at the time. See, when Ben Holman came, he came as head of media for CRS, and not director of the agency. The director of the agency, I've forgotten his name now, but I came in under Roger Wilkins. But it was not even Roger then, Roger was with the agency, but he was not director. When I was asked to join I said, "Alright, I'll take a look." And I told them that I needed a fourteen to come aboard. They didn't have a fourteen to give me, so I didn't come. Just that simple. A year later, I was called by a guy named George Cobos. George was deputy director then and in charge of the field staff, and he was in charge of recruiting and staffing up. He called and he said, "Ozell, you don't know me, I don't know you, I only know who you are, but we're trying to staff CRS and I see that you don't have an application in here, but I see where they talked with you last year about coming aboard, so I'm checking. We need people to come aboard who are already seasoned and experienced. You headed our council on Human Relations and you're just the kind of person we need to come aboard. So, how about it?" I said, "Can you give me a fourteen?" He said, "No, I can't give you a fourteen. We don't have a fourteen." I said, "Well, that is my condition." And we talked for awhile and he said, "Are you coming up to the white House conference on Civil Rights?" I said, "Yes, I'm coming up. Now I don't work for one of these agencies that's going to pay my way," I said. That's the way we were in those days, we had to pay our own way, but I did that. "I might be having donuts and coffee for breakfast, and stew for dinner, but I'll be there." He said, "Well, let's get together." He described himself to me so I would know him and I described myself to him. Sure enough, we got together and he offered the job again and I said, "You got a fourteen?" He said, "No, but I have another proposition I'd like to offer you. Would you come for a thirteen if I open you an office there in Little Rock?" I said, "Well, if I don't have to move, I'll come for a thirteen." He said, "Now you're going to travel like hell. You're not going to be working in Little Rock, but home will still be in Little Rock." And my wife's a teacher there, so she could keep on teaching. He said, "But you will leave home on Mondays and come back on Thursdays. Now can you handle that?" I said, "As long as I don't have to move, I'll come for a thirteen." So they opened an office in the area and I got the thirteen, and that's how I came to CRS. But I was assigned in New Orleans. And I was in New Orleans every Monday morning.

Question:
So Little Rock was a field office? Is that what they called it?

Answer:
Yes, it was a field office.

Question:
Did you come on as a conciliator? The agency had not done mediation by that point, is that right?

Answer:
Uh, no.

Question:
So what sort of title did they hire you as?

Answer:
They hired me as a field representative. And later changed from field representative to state supervisor and then regional director, but we were first field reps. I worked in New Orleans and Shreveport from June or July 1966 until January 1968 and after the sanitation workers protest in Memphis in January, I was transferred from New Orleans to Memphis.

Question:
So you've seen the agency and the nation in lots of different circumstances.

Answer:
Well I have. I've been a field rep, I've been a state supervisor, and I've been regional director, so I did it all.

Question:
And you've been regional director for how long?

Answer:
Since 1972. I haven't had a promotion since then, isn't that a shame? (laughter) Promoted to where? I had the opportunity to be director when Jimmy Carter was President. I didn't choose to go to Washington. It was my own choice. But, I didn't choose Washington. I like to stay where the action is and the action's definitely here, most especially in this region.

Question:
Alright. Let's talk about a case. Would you maybe think about a case that typifies your work and that you think would be particularly good at illustrating for people that are trying to get into the field, the principles, or what's involved.

Answer:
There are so many kinds of cases. In some of them, you have dramatic confrontation, like we had in Memphis, for example. I was the field rep in charge of Memphis when Martin was killed. That whole crisis had evolved from January to April. I think Martin was killed on April 4th.

Question:
April 4th, yes. 1968. Let's take that case and would you walk us through that? How did you get in, what did you do? Everything.

Answer:
Right. When the sanitation workers started that protest, I was called by George Pembleton and he said, "Ozell, we want you to get to Memphis." I had read something about the conflict, and teasingly I said, "And do what?" He said, "You're the one person I'm sparing who will know what to do once you're there. So just get there." So I went to Memphis. Now this is the way you do it-- CRS first does an alert of a case. An alert simply calls attention to the fact that the problem exists. We don't even know whether it's our jurisdiction or not, but it sounds like it. And then there's some preliminary information I gather so I can alert those involved, find out where and all of this. And then there's what we call an on-site assessment. Where you go on-site and you determine surely, who the parties are in the conflict, what are the demands, what parties are blocking or refusing to yield to the demands, and as a result of that, what the problem is.

Question:
Okay, that's what I want you to walk us through. How do you know who the conflict is with? Who are the parties? What are the demands? Exactly what you said.

Answer:
Well, I knew that it was the sanitation workers. It was just a matter of finding out particularly who was leading the sanitation workers and where their leadership was coming from, who was making the decisions. I knew it was against the city, so it was just a matter of finding out what powers in the city were pulling the strings. The mayor, the city council, what part everybody was playing. You do that by just simply conferring with people. I went to the sanitation workers' leadership to find out exactly what their demands were. By this time they'd been circulated everywhere, anyway, in the newspaper and in leaflets. And I sat down with the parties to see where it is that they were. And you get some idea, in the back of your mind, what it would take to resolve the problem. Of course, they will tell you in no uncertain words. And then you go to the other side and say, "Mr. Mayor, these are demands being made by the sanitation workers. Now what is it that keeps you from agreeing to their demands? Why is it that you refuse to do this?" All of these questions are focused towards why and what your position is. The sanitation workers position was not only that they were very low paid, but they contended that they were not treated as human beings ought to be treated, and that they wanted their dues write-off. Now do you understand what I mean by dues write-off?

Question:
No, I don't.

Answer:
Well there's a union. They don't collect the money from the union members. Rather the city, or whatever they're working for, pays the union, and the city collects the money and gives it to the union, right? Or the company they're working for does this--that's what you call dues write-off. That's a withdrawal from your paycheck of the dues which is turned over to the union. The city refused to give a dues write-off because they refused to recognize the union.

Question:
Because?

Answer:
Well, that was just their attitude, to not recognize a union. They didn't want any unions there in city government.

Question:
You think it didn't have anything to do with the fact that the sanitation workers were almost exclusively black?

Answer:
Of course it did. But see, when you've got a union, one that's recognized, that caused a problem. When the company has a recognized the union, that within itself gives the members power. That gives the union bargaining rights with you, that you freely granted, right? And the relationship between you and the union becomes a bargaining thing. Well the city wasn't about to give that up, most especially to a group of black men. So the unions stepped up their protest and they moved to more than just rioting and picketing, they moved to mass demonstrations, as you remember. And the city, being opposed, and back in those days, chose to interfere with the demonstrations to just simply give the marchers pure hell. That was that kind of climate that was going on by the time we got into late February and March. And Martin, the union and the black leadership in Memphis, by this time, had joined the union in protest. The black ministers, the NAACP, and the organizations like that, had come in on the union side, so that's going on. And in order to step it up another notch, they invited Dr. King in. Just about everywhere Dr. King ever went, he was invited in. He didn't particularly start the movement. So when he came to Memphis, naturally, this further highlighted the movement. Every night they'd have this big mass meeting with eight or ten thousand people and they'd have marches every Saturday. So Dr. King would come in for that and that lifted the protest to another level. You have nine or ten thousand people in mass meetings at night, and you're having big marches on the weekend. Now, what's our role? Our role is to try to keep the situation as peaceful as possible by trying to persuade the city not to do anything that inflames the situation. And most of these things, back in those days, and still today, were inflamed by police action. Some of it happened out of ignorance and others deliberately. Back in those days, it was deliberate. For example, the city parents insisted that the marchers could only occupy half of the street. And the police would take the attitude that if anybody steps across that centerline, they would arrest them. Sometimes they were arrested when they really didn't step across the line. The police were harassing them all of the time, about any little thing that they could come up with. I had three people assigned to me from CRS. One was Jim Laue. He was with George Mason University until he died, with the Conflict Resolution program they have there. Jim Laue, and Fred Miller, a man who has now left from this area, came into help me. We divided the chores. Jim, who was white, was assigned to SCLC, and his job was to know at all times what they were going to do. To try to persuade them not to do anything that inflamed this situation by trying to get them not to protest violently, but to conduct protests in a way that would not heighten tension or cause conflict. And so Jim was assigned to Martin, I was assigned to the police and the courts. Now it sounds just like the assignment was backwards, right? But is really wasn't. Jim Laue knew Martin's co-workers well. He had done some research for them, he had actually done consulting with them, so he knew them very well. I knew them, but not in the same kind of detail that he did, having worked with him before. So I was assigned to the police. I was supposed to make sure that their commanders and police forces knew exactly who I was and why I was there, and what it was I was trying to do. And I was supposed to know at all times, as far as you could know, how the police were going to respond to every single thing. And I was also reporting to the commanders when I saw police were out of line in those marches. I said, "they just simply harass the marchers all of the time, trying to provoke something out of innocence," and that was my job. I was also liaison with the court, talking to the judge about his orders, whether they were effective in doing what he set out to do, or whether the orders ever started more problems than anything else. So that's the way that we went about it. Plus I was the only person among us who could go down in the middle of the housing project workers, invade that group of young black militants that I knew of before, and talk with them. Everybody else was very reluctant to do that. And probably everybody else was scared to do that. But I come from that old school, "fools rush in, but angels dare to try," you've heard it. I've always found that I could talk to the militants. Very, very well. Without any fear, because most of the fear about what's going to happen with them, to me, or to anybody like me, was up here [in my head] not actual and I knew that. They weren't going to harm me. I wasn't their problem. I got with them and they just cut me off and said that what I was talking about was damn stupid, but that didn't bother me. All of a sudden you come for them, you know how those guys are, you look better than they are, but that's your people. That kind of thing.

Question:
What was your goal in working with the Invaders?

Answer:
The Invaders were opposed to non-violent techniques, absolutely. Absolutely, they advocated violence, and they provoked violence. When that last march that Martin led broke up in disarray, it was because the Invaders started breaking out plate glass windows. It was not the marchers that started to break those plate glass windows. It was the Invaders, and their followers that did, which provoked the police to attack the marchers. The police fell right into the trap. The seven or eight thousand marchers were doing nothing. The deputy chief of police, was commanding the street. He came up to me and as I said, I knew him. I went down to the police station everyday, so I knew him. I always marched in that gray area between the marchers and where the press was backing up, you know, taking pictures. I was always in that area, in front of the marchers, but between them and the cameras. And so the deputy police chief came up to me and said, "Mr. Sutton, we got to do something about this march, I may have to stop it." I said, "Chief, you can't stop this march, it stretches out for miles back there. If you stop the people in front, the others are going to keep coming, they don't even know the march is stopped in that sense. Then you've got chaos." And then he said, "Where is Dr. King?" I said, "Dr. King is over in that line, about three or four lines back. He usually started up front, but folk got in front of him in these marches. You'll find him." He said, "No, I'm not going in there. Would you go in there and tell Dr. King to come out?" So I went in there like a fool and got Dr. King to come out. And while I'm in there, all hell breaks loose, police start shooting their tear gas, swinging them billy sticks, and using their water hoses, and so all hell breaks loose. One of the things I give CRS credit for is that they got Dr. King out of there fast. I do mean fast. A car rolled up and they shoved Dr. King in the car and the car got out of there.

Question:
So the sheriff, it sounds like, viewed you as an ally in some way.

Answer:
Not really.

Question:
Oh, okay. Say some more about that.

Answer:
It wasn't the sheriff, it was the city police. But they knew me and I was the one person they could talk to, because I was the one person they knew. I was always down at the city hall talking to the chief about how y'all conduct things and trying to tell them what to do, none of which they did. There was some interaction between us in that sense. But when all hell broke loose, and they started driving the blacks back toward the church, this police officer runs up to me with that long riot stick and he punches me in the stomach with that stick and he told me to "get." And I'm crying out like a crazy somebody. I wouldn't run, and I couldn't fight. I couldn't fight because I didn't have anything to fight with. He's got a stick and a gun, right? I have nothing. So he starts wailing on me with that stick and tells me to "get." Now, if I'd have had some sense, I guess I would have run. That's what he wanted me to do. But I wouldn't do that. And I was wheeling, and then he got mad because he couldn't hit my head, because as big as my head is, I can get it way down in my shoulders, at least in those days I could. He beat up my shoulders and arms pretty good, but he never hit my head a single time. I tell everybody, if you think that Muhammad Ali could do the ropedy-dope you should have seen me. You should have seen my weaving and bobbing and I think golly, I would have made Muhammad Ali look like a neophyte. But he never hit my head a single time. The only thing that saved me was a young white man. Stanfield was his name. I knew him from the days I was director of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations. When I was director of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations, he was director of the Virginia Council on Human Relations. And I had gone on to work for CRS and he'd come down here to work with the Southern Regional Council. He was a field rep for the Southern Regional Council. Back in those days, it was a small world -- we all, just about, knew each other. So, Stanfield stepped down off the sidewalk, now they weren't bothering Stanfield, and he grabbed me by my arm and stashed me up there where he was.

Question:
That must have been terrifying.

Answer:
It was and it hurt a whole lot. I'm with the Justice Department, and they know that, but you see when the confrontation started, the police all pulled their badges off so their names couldn't be identified. When that ruckus was over I went tearing down to the police department. I went to see the deputy police chief to tell him what happened to me. He said, "Do you know who hit you?" "Of course I don't know who hit me." He said, "Well, if I knew who hit you I could deal with it but there's nothing I can do." I said, "Chief, you knew the men didn't have on badges or their nameplate, so how could I tell you who hit me?" He said, "Well, all I can say is I'm sorry." And that's what went on. That evening when that march was broken up, they had the mass meeting that night, and large numbers of people came and they talked about that. But, the next Saturday, Martin was to come back into Memphis, because he wanted to truly demonstrate that he could lead a non-violent march in Memphis. So he came back to lead a non-violent march and that's when he was killed. He came back and he had a series of meetings with the black leadership in Memphis. He even met with the Invaders, trying to persuade them all that the best possible way was the non-violent way. Martin was at first staying at a Holiday Inn down on the river, the Holiday Inn Riverfront. Then he moved to the Lorraine because of the complaints of the Invaders, that he was staying down there in this white hotel, you know the story, they said he didn't have any business staying down there. He ought to move from down there and move to the Lorraine hotel where black folk come. And he did. And when Martin was shot, he was in 306 of the Lorraine Hotel and I was in 308. Well when Martin went to the Lorraine we had to go there. Because I was staying in the Holiday Inn, too. No I wasn't, I was staying in the Peabody. But we moved into the Lorraine. Now I kept my room in the Peabody too, because that was the only way to get some rest. You couldn't get any rest down at the Lorraine, although I would stay in the Lorraine until after the mass meeting, and then I would go on to the Peabody because we couldn't get messages in the Lorraine Hotel. It might be tomorrow when they give you messages-- there was somebody who called yesterday, but there'd be nobody on the switchboard-- you know how those kinds of things go. So, since I was with the Department of Justice, I really did have to be reachable. So I would always call back to the Peabody and see if I had some messages and that's the way my staff in Washington kept up with me. Anyway, Martin had spent that day meeting with everybody, including the Invaders. He really had a rigorous day that day, but he was getting ready to go to dinner with a local minister just a few minutes before 6 o'clock. About that time, I went and got both papers -- they have two papers in Memphis, so I went and got both of those papers, went into my room and turned on the TV. I kicked off my shoes and planned to get some rest between 6:00pm and 7:30pm, when the mass meeting was to start. And of course it's been a tiring day for me as well. So I got in there and just about the time I got my shoes off and turned the TV on and got comfortable. I heard the shot ring out. I was not particularly upset by the shot because there was a lot of shooting and fighting between the Invaders and the Police, so it was nothing unusual. But then I heard people clapping down in the courtyard, which was gravel at the time, so I could hear people running through the courtyard. I said, "let me get up here and see what in the world is going on." So I got up and came out of my room onto the balcony there and I thought what had occurred was down in the courtyard, because that's where the people were running. But they were running to get up here where I was already. Just about that time I peeked over the rail, they started to come up by the rail, up these steps, and then I realized whatever had occurred had occurred up here. And then I looked around and about 3 or 4 paces from me was Martin's body. He was slumped back against the wall. One of the first people to get to him was my co-worker Jim Laue. Jim ran to get a towel to try to stop his bleeding and by that time Jesse was there and I don't know who all was there, but a whole host of people. I didn't go over because there's no purpose I could serve but to block off access for the ambulance. The ambulance came fast and they picked him up and carried him to the hospital and I got in my car and went to the hospital too. I went directly to the night administrator and told them who I was. I identified myself and showed my credentials and told him that I needed to find out how Dr. King was because I had to report to my agency. I knew that other people in the Department of Justice and most especially CRS were looking to hear from me. So he took me down to the emergency room and he didn't carry me in there, but he took me to an outer room and asked a group of doctors if somebody would come out and brief me as to Dr. King's condition. One doctor came out, looked me straight in the eye and said, "He's dead, Mr. Sutton." That was an awful night. I ran and jumped on the phone right quickly, because I knew the lines were going to get tied up. But I was able to get through to Roger Wilkins, our director at that time. I got through to Roger, and Roger quickly got the Attorney General, who was Ramsey Clark at that time. So that's what occurred that night. The Martin Luther King entourage acted just like the disciples did when Christ went to the cross. Andy and Jesse and Jose and Russ David Abenar and I-- the whole gang-- they were just walking around in a daze, not quite knowing what about to do, as if there was anything to do. I went over to the hall in the Mason Temple, which is a big temple owned by the Sanctified Church that would seat 12 or 15 thousand people. I went over there, even though that was not my prerogative to do that. The hall was full. Everyone there knew that King had been shot, and by now they just learned that he was dead. But they were just sitting there. Just sitting-- you could hear a pin fall with all them people just sitting there. I went to the microphone and announced that I knew they knew that Dr. King had been shot and is now dead, but I advised them to go straight home. "There's nothing you can do tonight, and I'm sure that your leadership will be getting together tomorrow to decide whatever's to be done. And that will be announced, so I would suggest that you go straight home. And they did. Who was I to go over there and dismiss them? The King entourage was nowhere around, so they got up and filed out just as quietly and got in their cars and went home. That was an awful night. My wife found me about 2 o'clock in the morning. Of course, she had been on pins and needles about my welfare, because she knew wherever the accident was, I was. I had friends calling from all over the country that night trying to find me. A lady from a little town called Jonesborough, AK that I'd known when I directed the Arkansas Council. She was a member of my board, and she was frantically trying to find me. She finally found me later that night at about 4 o'clock in the morning in the Peabody hotel, and she said "Ozell?" I said, "yes." "Are you alright?" I said, "I am fine, thank you." She said, "Well I've called every place I know in Memphis--I bet you I've made 20 calls to Memphis, trying to find you." I said, "it sure is nice to have friends like you." And she said "Well, you know, when it comes to you, I was concerned, and I just knew you were somewhere close, because that's just like you." And I said, "Yeah, I was too close." And I talked to my wife too. My wife would always accuse me of not telling her a lot of things when danger was involved. I just didn't want to tell her, because I didn't want her to worry. When you're way over there, you worry more than the person who is present and facing danger, because you don't know what's going on there. Quite often, I didn't tell my wife and my children what things were really like. It was only later when they found out what things were really like that night and other times during the Memphis crisis. I just didn't talk about it too much, because I knew if every time I left home to go there, then I'd have to go through all this stuff. And I'd rather not do that. I was a different kind of person, even before I was with this agency. Even before, when I was dealing with civil right issues, unlike most people, I never carried my children with me, I never carried my wife with me. It's hard for me to be non-violent when you twisted my child's arm, but you can twist mine.

Question:
So that was how you managed your emotions?

Answer:
That's how I managed my emotions, by not having them around. You see, if my wife's there, I've got to act manly. You get what I mean -- I got to protect her with my life.

Question:
Did you have people that you'd talk to about the things you were feeling? How did you deal with that?

Answer:
People in the movement talk. I remember talking about Martin's last speech when he told how he had "been to the mountaintop..." I am fortunate to have heard both of Martin's great speeches I was in the March on Washington when he did the "I Have a Dream" speech and I was in Memphis sitting on the 5th row in seat number 12 in Mason Temple when he did the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech. The next morning at breakfast some of us were sitting around the table in the Peabody, and my friend asked me, "Ozell, didn't Martin seem very strange to you last night in his speech?" I said, "no, you know Martin knows how to reach his audience." But my friend said, "I know, but his whole language was different." I said, "come to think about it, that's the first time I ever heard him chronicle this whole involvement in the civil rights movement," as if he wanted to make sure it was on record. He developed it all the way from Montgomery to the time he got stabbed in Chicago, you remember, and led all the way through Birmingham and up from Selma. He chronicled all these things, but then he said, "but I'm not worried now." It was a resignation, it was that strange. We concluded after that Martin had a premonition of his death. Well, he just knew at some time or another he was going to be killed. They killed Aganda, they killed Kennedy, and he had to know that they were going to kill him. He knew it, yet he had no choice but to do what he was doing. I talk to young people about that. Martin used to say that the man who has not found something for which he's willing to die is yet to find something worth living for. So he was killed.

Question:
Before we leave this story, tell me, what was the original goal of your involvement in Memphis? You were working with the sanitation workers to do what?

Answer:
To help them to pursue their protest without police molestation or beatings. To even assist them to achieve their goals I met with the mayor, I met with the city council, I met with everybody informed, asking them what's so dastardly about what they [the sanitation workers] are asking for. The mayor would tell me that he didn't believe in unions and that no union in his city was going to get any kind of a dues write off and nobody's going to push him around and you know how the story goes. I guess I met with the mayor a half dozen times, and I met with police, trying to get them to move police with the march, rather than trying to stop the march. I met with the marchers and that's when we started the whole process of self marshaling and disciplining your group. I explained that this court order says that you only have half of the street and it's your job to see that nobody steps across that.

Question:
So you had different goals for each group?

Answer:
You see, it's their goals. You try to assist them and facilitate in their goals without being harassed, beaten or these kinds of things. So you try to get police to conduct themselves in a way that will not interfere with the people's right to address their issues and to redress those issues. You go around with an all-American notion that a person has a right to redress and protest if he or she decides to do so, and you don't have a right to go around preventing them from doing that, as long as they're doing it legally. But the establishment made it impossible to do it legally by restricting the streets and not letting them march when they wanted to march. So I'll provoke them and I'll just stand there when you get in a major march. The core of the marchers are committed people, but not everybody there is particularly committed to non-violence. Don't fool yourself about that. Most of them would commit to non-violence as long as there's not too much provocation. Then, when too much provocation comes, one man said to somebody "hit me now." We'll see how non-violent he is. So someone starts and then the fight's on.

Question:
Well how did you get the police to change their ways?

Answer:
Well, sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. It's a gradual process. You go way out of your way. For example, I'm as much responsible for the establishment of NOBPE -- the National Organization of Black Police Executives -- as anyone. It is big now, and a powerful force. I came up with the notion that if we were going to change the police actions, we needed to get more blacks in police forces across the South. I can come up with more notions than anybody else. I'm the kind of person who moves to act on my notions, too. So I got with Lee Brown, who is now a mayor, but when I first met him, he was head of the Department of Criminology at Howard University. He wasn't even in policing, but he was the first black to receive a doctorate in Criminology. Dr. Lee Brown, I've forgotten where he came from--University of Chicago maybe? Anyway, he was head of the Department of Criminology at Howard. He came down here and I said "Lee, we have got to find a way to get more blacks into high rank in the Police Department where the decisions are made. Not where they are carried out, but where they are made." So we got together, and we decided to invite the few high-ranking blacks there to Atlanta to have this discussion. We wanted to figure out what could be done, just like we did with the Civil Rights Act way back in '62 and '63. We came here to just sort of run through our minds what could be done. We brought them here on a citizen letter from me. See, I already have that power. I can invite a non- employee to come to a certain place to perform a government function at this agency. So we invited twenty-five of them from across the country, all whom were paid by me. I was bold and audacious and got away with a lot of things. I am the kind of person who believes that if you ask you permission to do something, you invite a turn down right? If you go ahead and do it, then the worst thing that happens to you is a slap on the hand. So I take a slap on the hand I just go ahead and do it. Then you tell me, as my boss, I should not have done that, and I just smile and say, "Yeah, you're right." But it's done. But I knew if I'd asked you would've said "no." So anyway, they were brought here and we discussed what could be done, and that was the beginning of NOBPE. They weren't organized at that time, but the seed was planted.

Question:
How did you establish trust between the two parties? Or between the parties and yourself?

Answer:
What they have, and this is what they have in the mediation all the time, is fear and knowledge. They knew what has happened here, and what has happened there. They knew what had happened across the country. Knowledge is a powerful thing. Then you can persuade by simple knowledge that you don't want this to happen here. Look what happened in L.A. Look what happened in here. This is why it happened. We talk about how to prevent this kind of thing. I was in Los Angeles during the riot. I was in charge of operation in L.A. during the Rodney King crisis. I was right there the same night that the crisis occurred. When I start to sit down with police, I have credibility. I feel that a couple of us were responsible for the federal government bringing civil rights charges against the officer in L.A. who beat Rodney King. If you remember correctly in L.A., they were exonerated on state charges and freed and that's when the blacks went wild. They didn't go wild when Rodney was beaten. They went wild when the courts freed the police officer. I'll talk about that. I said when the courts refuse to function and when the court order of justice broke down and they didn't receive justice, that's when they went wild. They waited after Rodney King was beaten to see what the justice system would do. When it did nothing, they decided to take it in their own hands. So that's what occurred and we talked about that. I convinced the feds that the only way that you're going to stop such rioting is to give black folks some hope that something's going to be done. Now the state authority failed to act, and so they can't go back and try them again. We must claim there was a civil rights violation. The U. S. Attorney didn't want that. The FBI didn't want to do that. But I insisted, and argued and jumped up and beat my chest. You get what I mean now-- every once in a while, you have to act insane, you're so intense. The U. S. Attorney said, "Well Mr. Sutton, it's so hard to prove a civil rights violation." I said, "I know it but we've got to bring them anyway." I said, "We did that down in Miami." Then I'll talk about Miami and the things that stopped the rioting in Miami. The Attorney General came down there and all of the Justice Department Agency people were in the media. I convinced the Attorney General to go on the radio and TV in a press conference and announce that the federal government, and the U. S. Department of Justice, was going to bring violation of civil rights charges. His whole staff was saying the Attorney General can't do that. I said, "why can't you do that? Mr. Attorney General, that's the only thing that's going to bring any peace to this area. The next thing that I want you to do, I want you to meet with all the black leaders that have gathered here from across the country."

Question:
This is what you said?

Answer:
Me, yeah.

Question:
To the Attorney General?

Answer:
Yes, I talked to the Attorney General. My problem is I'm not scared of anybody, most especially when it comes to things like this. I know more than they do, and I don't have any problems saying so. I said, "Jesse Jackson and Ben Hooks are here." At that time, our friend Jordan was in the arena too. I would suggest that you convene, or let me convene them all, so you can talk with them. So he gave me permission to do that. At first Jesse refused to come because he was hoping to have a private meeting with the Attorney General. I said, "take it from me Jesse, because of the Attorney General's schedule, that's not possible. That's not going to happen." Well if it doesn't happen, then it doesn't happen. Good man, tremendous man, but Jesse likes to make decisions alone instead of making decisions with a group. He raises issues that nobody else raised, but I know him, and I said, "Well Jesse, we're going to have this meeting with the Attorney General at 10:00." I said to him that I hoped that he would come. "Come for me," I asked.

Question:
What year are we talking about?

Answer:
We are talking about the 1970's sometime. It had to be three or four years before the Rodney King incident. I'd have to go back and look in the records to see. I lose track of time. So Jesse came. We set up a meeting with the local leadership, the grassroots leadership, at a breakfast at 8:00 and we got all of the leaders from out of town together to come and meet with the Attorney General. I have sinister designs sometime. The local leadership was not invited to meet with the Attorney General. But I knew if they came to that breakfast, when we got ready to go meet with the Attorney General, they were going to. The Attorney General had staff. "Who's that?" they asked. They can't come in here. I said "if you want to have another riot, you try to get them out of here. Let me know before you start so I can leave, because I don't plan to tell them they aren't coming in here." "What do we say to the Attorney General?" (He was still up in his room.) I said, "Let me talk to the Attorney General." I went up, I said, "Mr. Attorney General, the grassroots folk are here, and they're not going to be polite like Jesse and Ben. They're going to crush you out, now, if you can take it for fifteen or twenty minutes then we can get somewhere. Just listen, some of them are going to be blowing off steam. Some of them are just glad to be able to tick you off, and they're going to do that, can you take it?" He said, "yeah, I can take it." I said, "well just take it, and then we can get onto the nitty-gritty. Just let them sound off for about fifteen or twenty minutes." And they did.

Question:
What did the Attorney General do?

Answer:
He stood there and he turned red, but he took it. They talked about the United States Department of Justice, and all of the injustices that ever occurred to black folk going back to 1400's. I said, "They know their history." The chronicle of the black struggle going all the way back to those days.

Question:
How did you identify which of the grassroots people to invite to the meeting?

Answer:
You just sought out the leadership. The leadership comes to the surface. It may not be of the same class as middle class blacks, but it shows itself.

Question:
Again, how did you know that? How did you find those resources?

Answer:
Well, I've been around for a thousand years. I used to be a community leader, myself. I was with Central High 9 when they entered Center High School; I was a young NAACP worker in those days. So I know it when I see it, because I used to be a part of that too. Some of the greatest things I ever dealt with was grassroots community leadership. I could persuade people. It's a culmination of a life of involvement in that. Every aspect you see, you've done it-"been there, done that." And I tell whites now, and I tell blacks, don't try to squash leadership, because it does not lead as you would lead as a middle-class black. Let it go, try to direct it, but be proud of that fire that sends them forth.

Question:
So just by way of closing, I'm hearing in addition to your knowledge of the situation, because you had an eye and an ear for what was going on in the community, you also had some pretty top-notch persuasive skills?

Answer:
I'm pretty good. I really am. Most especially when I get fired up. You've talked to me way back yonder, you have to bring fever, I'm like an old preacher. Didn't have much knowledge, what he had was fervor, and he couldn't lead because of knowledge, he led because there are two things you have to do. In the first place, you have to impact knowledge, and the other one is to impart a sense of who you are. So I come from a combination of inspiration and information that Martin brought so beautifully. He could inspire us to keep on keeping on. He did that on Sunday and I learned how to do it. I learned. I said, "People wouldn't march in Birmingham because of knowledge." They had inspiration. That's why you didn't find any college professors out there. You didn't see any academicians out there because they had information. They knew that, with that information, they'd get hell beat out of them out there. But inspiration would drive you despite that. You knew you were going to get the hell beat out of you, and that's what comes. I talk all the time about the difference between inspiration and information, and when you combine the two what a mighty thing you have.

Question:
Mr. Sutton, since we've got just an hour, I'd like to focus on some really specific things, if we may. We were talking yesterday about the Memphis case, and there are a couple of pieces I need to clarify. But I would also like to ask you if you would help us understand the difference between functioning as a regional director and as a field worker. So we'll start there and we'll move back to Memphis.

Answer:
There's a world of difference, of course. A regional director supervises the way a person performs. There are occasions when a regional director performs, but that's not too often. Even when he goes out in the field, the field has a tendency to defer to him or to her. In most situations. That's the basic difference, a regional director assigns and supervises, while a field person performs.

Question:
Ok. So going to Memphis, when you first went into Memphis, were you invited by the community, or did you invite yourself?

Answer:
No, CRS responds in several ways. It responds by invitation from officials; it responds on invitation of those who raise an issue- protestors; it responds to knowledge of facts that come from news. It has the responsibility, if it knows about it, to respond. So after the situation in Memphis was created, CRS jumped ahead and dispatched somebody there, according to its mandate.

Question:
So your regional director would've dispatched you, or did dispatch you, to Memphis?

Answer:
We didn't have any regional directors at that time. We were not so organized. I was a field representative throughout the South, and that's the way it started. When I came aboard there were four of us in the South, three white and one black. I was the next half of all teams, so we were not so structured as we are now.

Question:
So you dispatched yourself to Memphis?

Answer:
No. George Copelson did.

Question:
You said that, that's right.

Answer:
George Copelson called...

Question:
...who was the deputy director. Okay, I get it.

Answer:
Which meant that he was in charge of the field staff. Called me and told me to leave New Orleans, and go to Memphis.

Question:
Could you talk a little bit about how you prepared for your on-site intervention when you first got to town.

Answer:
You work on the basic knowledge you have as to what you do when conflict is ongoing. It is pretty given, for experienced people, as to what you do when you go into a city that's already in conflict. The first thing to do is to try to get a handle on the nature of the conflict, who's causing the conflict, who could bring resolution to the conflict and then you start there. You start with the people who are raising the issues, at least I do. Some people start by going to officials. I never do that, because I want to know, in the eyes of those who are raising the issue, what they consider the problems to be. So when I go to the mayor, when I go to the chief of police, I have a fix on what the problem is, as seen by those who are raising the issue.

Question:
So, speaking specifically about Memphis, who were those people? Walk us through, step- by-step, what you did.

Answer:
By the time I went into Memphis there was a well-organized protest group. It was in about three parts, a loosely organized coalition. The most powerful part of it was a group of black preachers- they were primarily the spokespersons for the coalition.

Question:
But the coalition was built around the sanitation workers problems?

Answer:
Yes.

Question:
Ok, how did the sanitation workers get the coalition happening with the pastors?

Answer:
How did they get them involved?

Question:
Right.

Answer:
Well it's no different from any other problem of that nature. When you have a problem and you come from a powerless group, you start to ask people in the powerful group to give leadership and status to it. So that was the NAACP and its leadership, the Urban League and its leadership, and then there was the Black Ministers Alliance.

Question:
So you went to the ministers first?

Answer:
I 'm not sure, but they all were done. It all depends on who's available to see me first. I made contact, because I already knew most of them. You can't go too many places in this region that I don't know somebody.

Question:
Did you let them know beforehand that you were coming?

Answer:
No.

Question:
You just showed up.

Answer:
I just showed up on their doorstep. You have a powerful group, AME United Methodist Preachers as well as the Church of God and Christ. That was Bishop Gengel, for the Church of God and Christ, the bishop was big in our area; his son was Patterson, that was his name. His son was a member of the city council, so the bishop had influence in the area. You had a couple of AME preachers, you had three or four big Baptist preachers or bishops, in the sense that they all made decisions in that church; you didn't have to wait for anybody. You have three or four outstanding Baptist ministers. They're some strong ministers in Memphis, as it is in all places, and it was this group that was giving primary articulation to the leadership.

Question:
Did you see at any time conflict between the organizations?

Answer:
Of course.

Question:
How did you address that conflict?

Answer:
There was conflict between the ministers and the labor union, which represented the sanitation workers. They had authority going beyond them. All the way up to the top of the labor, ASME -- that's the union to which they belonged, and that was the union that was waging the battle. Then there were the preachers, there was the NAACP with its leadership, and the Urban League with its leadership. The NAACP was very strong and had some powerful leadership that was not ministerial. Maxine Smith, who was the executive director of the NAACP and a member of the national board of the NAACP; there was a guy named Jesse Turner, the national treasurer of the NAACP, who was a CPA, but a member of the board, the Tri-State Bank in Memphis, and the insurance company in Memphis, Universal Life, and that was the money. Universal Life and the Tri-state Bank. That's where the movement would put their finances. Then you had the Invaders.

Question:
The community.

Answer:
Yeah. The group of young militants. They always carried crazy names, one name was Cabbagehead, one name was Sweet Willy Wines, and these names. Cabbagehead was the overall leader, Sweet Willy Wines was less of a leader but a leader nonetheless.

Question:
They were young people?

Answer:
Yes, young black men. All 18, 19, 22. All very young.

Question:
So was the conflict between the styles and how they communicated? One group was more militant than the other group? What was the actual conflict?

Answer:
When you came to the Invaders, that was the problem. They didn't believe in non-violence; everybody else believed in non-violence, but the Invaders wanted to use whatever means were necessary to make their point. That was the attitude of the Invaders. The rest of them were where Martin was, in terms of non-violence. But petty jealousies occurred. For instance, the ministers always had lime-light because they were always the ones speaking at the mass meetings at night. Several thousand people were present. "Who's speaking? The preachers are speaking."

Question:
Were you asked to mediate that tension between the two groups, or did it just exist?

Answer:
It just existed, and I was able to move around it. I didn't have time to be trying to heal things between them, because it didn't cause that much of a problem. Most of it was sort of petty jealousies that always exist in conflict situations. I'm used to it, and I expect it. As long as it doesn't last to the point of great division, then you just go ahead and do something else. Anytime three black folk get together, one is contrary, sometimes two.

Question:
Would you say what you did to help it not get to a point?

Answer:
I really didn't have to deal with that very much. You see, it all depends, in these situations, on how present the enemy is. If the enemy is so strong that you don't have time to differ with one another, you have to keep your eyes on the prize and they did that. They knew where the enemy was. They may have different techniques, or differences "Whether we ought to accept this, or not do this, or not do that," but the enemy, in their mind, is so strong and so eager they didn't have time for that sort of thing. I didn't have time for it either.

Question:
What process did you use to identify the underlying issues in the overall conflict?

Answer:
The funniest thing about working in this sphere: You really don't take a lot of steps, you just know. You make judgments based upon what you know to be so, and then you go around meeting with people. They tell you, "Oh, so-and-so over there is out for personal aggrandizement." He may be, he may not be, that doesn't really matter now. What matters is the position of the city, and how I would want to address that. You see them, you identify them in your mind, as long as they're not causing that much of a problem, you go ahead and do something about it.

Question:
As long as the underlying issues are not causing a problem. We're speaking about Memphis. The issues that you found very prevalent and important were they the same issues that groups considered important?

Answer:
Quite often they were. For example, after Martin was killed, Baird Rustin....do you know who I'm talking about? Baird Rustin came down to organize that peaceful march that Martin had come back to Memphis to do, but was killed before he could. Baird was a great master of demonstrations. He's the person who organized the march on Washington. He was a great tactician, so Baird Rustin came down and took charge of organizing the next march. When Baird walked the route of the march, he said, "Oh no, we can't march that way." Number one: They had a court order to deal with, because the city went into court and tried to get an injunction against him in another march. They didn't get the injunction, but they got a bunch of restrictions on the march. One is they could only use one half of the street; another one was that the march had to take place between ten and two; another one was the route of the march. When Baird had walked the route, he was that much of a tactician. Most folk would mark from here to here; he would walk it and see what the hindrances and encumbering things would be and he said, "Going that way, we have to pass two buildings in demolition and one building in construction. We don't want young people to be tempted to pick up rocks and bricks to throw. We don't even want to go that way, we want to go another way." But the court order was to go that way. And then the other was a problem too. Do you know how long it would take to process ten thousand people, marching four or five abreast? We couldn't even go downtown and get back within the four-hour span of the court order. So the court order needed to be changed. So then they turned to me as the mediator, and Baird said, "Mr. Sutton, somebody's got to go before the judge, and tell him what the encumbering things are as they relate to a peaceful march." Under usual circumstances, an attorney would go down and make that appeal, but that takes too long. The attorney would have to make a brief, and the judge would have to study the brief, and then come up with an answer. He said, "That would take three or four days, and we don't have that. Would you go down and just talk to the judge, man-to-man about this situation?" I agreed to do it, so the next morning, when the Justice Department agencies got together, as we did everyday, CRS, CRD (Civil Rights Division), U.S. Attorney, and F.B.I., all got together the next morning. I reported this to them. So the guy from the Civil Rights Division jumped up and said, "You can't do that!" I said, "What do you mean I can't do that?" He said, "The Justice Department can't be in the position of asking a judge to change his order." I said, "With the exception of the F.B.I., the rest of you are attorneys and I can understand your great fear of the judge. But a mediator does not have that kind of fear, at least this one does not, and I shall go." He said, "I'm the highest ranking member of the Department of Justice here, and I direct you not to go." I said, "You're getting things mixed up." He said, "What's that?" "You are the highest ranking person from the Civil Rights Division, I'm the highest ranking person from the Community Relations Service, and I promise you that the Community Relations Service would not tell the Civil Rights Division what to do, and the Civil Rights Division will not tell the Community Relations Service what to do. There are only two people telling me what to do and that's Roger Wilkins, Director of the agency, and the Attorney General himself. He said, "I shall call the attorney general." I said, "Call whoever you want to call." I left the meeting to go to meet with the judge, but on the way to meet with the judge, I called Roger. I said, "Roger" and he said, "Hey, Ozell, how's it going?" I said, "I say to you," and I'm always doing this, "you remember the scripture about how the lady said, I will go and see the king and if I perish, I perish?" I told Roger what I was about to do. I told him I was greatly upset at the Civil Rights Division, that he would probably hear about that, but that, "the only thing I need to know, is whether that disturbs you or not, Roger." Roger said, "Ozell, if you think that's what ought to be done, then you do that." That's the way Roger was. "You are a seasoned mediator, one of the best we have, so you go ahead and see the judge." I went to see the judge, and the judge received me, very politely, and I explained to him, I said, "Judge, marching four or five abreast, it would take more than five hours to process ten thousand people. Had you considered that?" He said, "The city does not want them to take the whole street." I said, "Judge, you know what that is. When the American Legion comes here, it takes the whole street. When the Shriners come here, they take the whole street. And they don't even get a permit. They just go out there and start marching. I used to be a commander of a protest group and when we came into town, we just went out there and start marching. We took the whole street and nobody said a word to us. This is selective law enforcement, which we cannot do in this situation. The city would not drive for three hours and they're going to need the whole street to do that, even for the city's sake they need the whole street." The judge agreed. Then I told him about the difficulty that they didn't want to march down that street, unlike it was in the other march. "Even the signs are not going to be on sticks; they're going to be on strings hanging on their necks, they're trying hard. We've got to help them." He agreed. He agreed to all that I asked him to do. When I came back and told Baird and the ministers and all the leadership, (they met every morning), that the route had been changed and that the judge had agreed, they were satisfied. I met with the Justice Department officials. This guy who was daring me to do something, he said, "You know, Ozell, you are a peculiar guy." I said, "There's nothing peculiar about me." I did that as a fun thing. He said, "You have a lot of audacity." I said, "I'm audacious. I'm more than audacious, I am bodacious." Bodacious is being brave and audacious. I've been out here a long time, and sometimes you have to take a risk, even with yourself. If the issue's big enough, you even risk your own self and your own career. I'm not out here playing, and what they said made sense to me. And I didn't have any reason to fear the judge. I'm just a laborer, I'm not a member of the court system. Judges are human beings, and I wanted to talk to the judge not in legal terms, but in practical terms.

Question:
It sounded like you took the interest of the parties.

Answer:
Yeah.

Question:
And the interest of the city, which is what a mediator would do?

Answer:
You mesh them. Even thought that wasn't what the city wanted done, as soon as I had done that and left the judge's office, I went over and met with the mayor and his chief of police and I said, "This is what it's going to be like. As negotiated by me. I would hope that it would meet with your understanding and your will, but this is the way it is. Everybody wants to know why they need a position like mine to go ahead and do something, and I did it." And the mayor looked up and said, "Well, Mr. Sutton, we have been accustomed to your moving on what you think ought to be done. Whether we like it or not, that's the way it is."

Question:
Did you always meet separately with the groups or did you ever run them together at the same location?

Answer:
No. This was not table mediation, this was street mediation. Street mediation is when you move between the parties, because to bring them together would reap no benefits at all. Their situation was too volatile, they were too far apart. There were times when the ministers did meet with the mayor; after all, he couldn't refuse to meet with them. They're great citizens of the city, right? I didn't bring them there, but if they had something they wanted to say to the mayor, they'd call down there and tell the mayor's executive that they wanted to see the mayor and they'd see the mayor. And I'd go, but I never arranged a meeting between them and the mayor.

Question:
So what did you see your role as, while you were participating in this?

Answer:
At first I didn't see a role of readiness for the resolution of the problem. I saw my role as "preventing violence and major conflict between the parties, until you can move through that stage to a stage where resolution can be made". I wasn't trying, at first, to solve the problem of the city refusing to give to the sanitation workers check off -that was the problem. I didn't see that as my role at first. My role was to prevent violence. As I was continuing to work, by this time, of course, there are two other men from CRS there: a guy named Jim Laue he's the one academician that I respect in this sphere. He was a combination of academician and activist. I had the greatest respect for James Laue until his death. He was a tower as an academician in this field, a person to whom I referred a lot for consultation. There was also a guy from here, from Jackson, Georgia, named Fred Miller. We had the greatest respect for "Big Fred", as we called him. He was a big 240-pound man, former football coach. He looked like a redneck. He was a purely beautiful man, who I worked all across the South with-- me and Big Fred. As a side note, one time we were in a little town in Mississippi. We had come there to work on a problem. I was the first black to stay in a hotel up there, the Holiday Inn. It was the first major chain to open to blacks across the South. We went to the Holiday Inn. I came in from Arkansas, and he came from Atlanta and he beat me there. When I arrived, the hotel insisted we were to be there five days, and they insisted that I pay the five days' cash up-front. Couldn't use a credit card, couldn't use a check, cash money up-front, right now. While I was standing there discussing that with them, Fred came down into the lobby, because he was looking for me. He overheard the conversation. Number one: Fred was not poor. Fred had a big plantation kind of thing in Jackson, Georgia, where they grow peaches. They still do, they still send me peaches from that farm. Fred always had $900 to $1000 in his pocket all of the time. While they were arguing, Fred reached down into his pocket and got a roll of money this big, and said, "Excuse me, ladies." He said, ???? That's exactly what he said -- only he didn't use abbreviations for it. He said, "You know, Ozell, they didn't ask me to pay ahead." He said, "I haven't paid a nickel; they're just doing that to you." He rolled off just a couple of One Hundred Dollar bills and said, "I'll pay for Ozell's room," and that's how I got in. Later on, the Klan surrounded the hotel room, but that's another story. The Klan surrounded the place, and we were in the room, and we moved in the room together. Fred said, "What do we do now, Ozell?" I said, "Well, I don't know Fred, we gotta do something." He said, "Well, we could call the police." I said, "Oh no, they're Klan too." You're just opening the door to the Klan by calling the police. He says, "We could call the F.B.I." I says, "They're Klan sympathizers down here, so they may not come and get us. The trouble is, anybody we call we got to go through switchboard, and that gives us another problem." I came up with an idea: I called the Department of Justice and I got our secretary. There were no high ranking blacks in the Department of Justice at that time. I said, "Lady, what I need to talk about, I'm not ready to talk about it to you. Furthermore, you can't help me. I want you to look outside the window somewhere, and find a black janitor or a handyman somewhere, preferably middle-aged. Don't ask me to explain all of this, just do it for me." And she did, she found a janitor, he was forty or fifty years old. When he came and said, "Hello," I said, "Ooday ooyay eekspay iglatinpay?" He answered me in pig-Latin! I told him in pig-Latin where I was. I said, "I want you to leave this phone and get on a private phone. I want you to call Roger Wilkins, and I want you to tell him what our situation is. Make sure that nobody hears you when you make the call and just leave it there. He'll take care of it." So he did. He went and he called Roger, and in about thirty minutes, U.S. Marshals came over and escorted us out of the hotel. So don't tell me I don't speak a foreign language, I speak the ghetto language. I want you to know I spoke some beautiful pig-Latin that day.

Question:
Before you were telling us about your role as in this particular conflict, initially starting off as preventing violence. What did you do specifically to prevent the violence, and when were you able to assume it was okay to change your role?

Answer:
For example, specifically when I met the city judge, I'm preventing violence.

Question:
Did they tell you, "If you don't meet with the judge, then we are going to do something"?

Answer:
No they didn't tell me that. They were counting on me to be able to persuade the judge of the wisdom of making the change. Then they would deal with whatever it was. But they didn't offer any threats. They didn't say, "We will march anyway; we're going to change the route anyway." They didn't do that. Usually, at first, protestors try their best to exert their protest without confrontation. They have nothing to gain from confrontation and they don't want to be beaten. They don't want to take anybody who faces imminent danger who's not afraid, who's a fool. He may go ahead and do it, it may be that important, but there isn't anybody who tells you when he faces imminent danger if he's not afraid of it, then he's a fool. I know I am, I might do it, and did do it, but I was scared as hell sometimes. They didn't make any threats; they were counting on me to be able to work it out. I had successfully worked between parties before. I was pretty well known at this time by all parties involved -- by the police, by the mayor, by the leaders of the movement, by the labor leaders -- everybody knew who Ozell was. He walked that line between them. They talk about that down in Memphis now. When we say they had an anniversary, when I showed up they thought a long-lost relative had shown up. "There's Ozell." One guy said, "You saved us from getting beaten many times."

Question:
Just by your willingness to go to the mayor, go to the city, speak on behalf of the sanitation workers.

Answer:
Not only that. I had another way, too. I was from the Department of Justice. Quite often you got two things. Blacks trusted the Community Relations Service more than they do the Department of Justice. But the weighted thing with whites is the Department of Justice. I think you can understand that. Even with the mayor and the chief of police, the Department of Justice carried much more weight. The Native Americans used to say, "The white man speaks with forked tongue." Well, I spoke with forked tongue. If I was in one place where it was more important that I be a field rep with Community Relations, that's all I say: "I'm with Community Relations." But when I was down at city hall, "I'm with Justice". That's the way I carried myself. Then you'd go between people. "I'm CRS." I was sort of responsible for initiating the whole idea of demonstrations. Marshaling themselves and controlling their people. At first it was just a group of people out there, but they got very sophisticated with that.

Question:
Okay, I would like to start with trust, the role of trust in being a mediator. Do you think of yourself as a mediator? Actually, let's focus back on the Memphis situation. Did you think of yourself as a mediator, or how would you describe your role if you had to come up with a title?

Answer:
You know, we used to try. And in recent years, we have combined the two, but in the early years, they were not combined. A mediator, in the early years, was a table condition. Conciliation was to move between the parties.

Question:
Okay, so what you called "street mediator" before would be a conciliator?

Answer:
Absolutely, yes.

Question:
Okay. Actually, before we move to trust, would you speak a little bit about the difference between street mediator/conciliator and table mediator?

Answer:
Well, table mediation is when you bring the two parties to the table, sort of like labor mediation. Street mediation is when you move in between the parties, rather then bring the two parties together. Quite often, you don't have enough consensus to bring the two parties together. If you did it would be much more explosive.

Question:
So consensus, you think, is necessary for table mediation?

Answer:
At least enough consensus that they both would come to the table. That's a big step. Let me tell you, I can get into more things than anybody else. There is a national group that I chair. I serve on the board for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They book me all the time, the best organization and centers for children. Way back 15 years ago, when we had the missing and murdered children conflict here, I became extremely alarmed by what was happening to the children. So I convened a group of child experts, in Louisville, Kentucky, along with a friend of mine. 125 of them, to take a look at what it was that we could do for them, what I needed to be doing. We first -- this friend of mine -- first tried to get the white House to convene a white House conference on children, and the white House wouldn't do that. Then we tried to get the Attorney General to do it and the Attorney General wouldn't do it. So where fools rush in... I said, "I will convene it," and who am I to talk about convening child experts from across the country, and who's going to come at my beck and call? But I was counting on one thing, the issue, not me, you know what I mean. That the issue was strong enough to attract them, that all they needed was facilitation. I sat down and I did that. I got the money to do that in three or four different places. Now this agency couldn't go and put a pile of money into the conference, so what I did, I brought all of the speakers in on citizen letters. Dick Salem knows what that is. So they just spent about 12 or 14 thousand dollars on citizen letters to bring in many of the people. Then I got the $25,000 of AFLA's money. My brother's still wanting to know where I got the money from charity. Or who gave the authority to do it. It's just the way I do things.

Question:
This reminds me of Jesse Jackson meeting with Milosovich, and helping these young kids to be released. I heard some students say to him, by who's authority do you go to these places and do the things that you do? So I'm going to ask you that same question: By what authority do you?

Answer:
By the authority of your own conscience and your own commitment, your conscious will to do something.

Question:
That really helps to explain when you have discussed the various roles and the perspectives you've taken in the cases, and your colleagues say, "Well, you can't do that, you can't do that." So I'm hearing the authority of your own conscience. So let's go back to street vs. table mediation. You were saying you do table mediation when there's at least enough consensus to bring people to the table. What I'm hearing you also say about street mediation, or conciliation -- which means going to the different parties and finding out what their concerns are, shuttling back and forth between the parties -- is that you are the vessel in that sense. But that requires a level of trust that all of the people have for you. Would you talk specifically about how you gain the trust of the parties?

Answer:
Well, part of it's trust, and the other part of it is that when they start to make choices, the choice that you are from is the most applicable to the situation. You come as all wisdom, if I might say that. Knowing everything that's to be known about it. Know about where this kind of situation in the country has occurred before. You are intimately knowledgeable about it. When you start going down the list of situations where you've seen it before, I think, "Been there, done that." So your trust comes from relating knowledge that nobody else has.

Question:
And how do you, Ozell Sutton, get this body of knowledge?

Answer:
Through having been involved for 30 years, and having been all over.

Question:
As a part of CRS?

Answer:
Not all the time. At first I was a civil rights leader working for a lot of people in need. That I did long before I came to CRS. I was on the other side-- I lived to protest. So I know how protesters think and how they develop, and how they move forward on what it is they do. So I know the other side, I know both sides of the question very well, and I know what goes on in the minds on both sides of the question. So, it gives me a slight advantage over most folk.

Question:
Well, in addition to experience, what can mediators do to build trust between themselves and the parties?

Answer:
A mediator must gain trust. Now, sometimes, to do that he has to do many things. Number one: he has to let the protesters vent. You see the difference between mediating a racial conflict and mediating a labor conflict, is that both sides come to the table in labor conflicts. It's not so in racial conflicts. With labor, both people know how to mediate. When you get a racial conflict, that's not necessarily so. It may be or it may not be. Now how do you bring this group of protestors to the table with city manager, chief of police and people at that level, when they are totally unequal? That's not so on labor, totally unequal. How do you protect their rights and their interests without showing a preference for them? I do it from the very beginning, I said, "I am not neutral. If I am neutral I can umpire this, like a game. I am not preferring sides, but I am forced to officiate evenly, even if the other side does not know what the rule is."

Question:
So you see trust and fairness being linked.

Answer:
Oh yeah, they are linked. And then much of the trust comes from how you demonstrate and conduct yourself. It's the perception of you, really. One way is to know, and know you know what you're talking about. Then the other part is, you have to convince both sides that at the rate they're going, they're going to do greater damage to each other. I convinced the city that, "You may have some powers, but when you have a segment of your city who perceive you as something less than fair and honest, you've got a problem. You may be able to enforce your will for a time, but," and I use this point often, "power is like a can of coffee; every time you dip into it, you've got less. Every time I take a sip out of that cup I've got less, right? Every time you have to use power to enforce, you've got less power left. If you keep dipping into it, it becomes powerless. When it comes to people you're enforcing against, you have to understand," and I say this quite frequently, "that in a democracy, you manage people with their own will. Without that will, you cannot. 10,000 police could not enforce the law in this city unless the will of the people is that they do. You can have all of the guns that you want, but you can't shoot a million folk. If a million folks rebel, even if 10,000 of those folk rebel, you are in big, big trouble. So you manage and you rule by that concept," and I keep emphasizing that all of the time. I use this with police officers. You couldn't take 10,000 Einsteins and rule this diverse city. So white folk alone can't rule this city. You couldn't take 10,000 W.B. DuBois and rule this city because black folk alone can't rule this city. There must be balance between the various groups, some sense of community that's inclusive enough to get the rule of the people to rule this city.

Question:
Is a sense of community also related to trust?

Answer:
It is.

Question:
How so?

Answer:
Well. Trust is in you, you convey the sense of community. That's what you use to try to get people to come to some kind of consensus. I talk about also mediation being preferable to litigation. First place it's shorter, more lasting, and in mediation, nobody loses. With litigation there's a winner and a loser, and the winner is for every man who wins. And it's not over just because you have won the court battle. Because you have lost a person right. Mediation, I like that.

Question:
And that raises another interesting question, that Harvard negotiation, win-win model, vs. what I'm thinking when you talk about street mediation, conciliation, that there are different ways that people resolve conflict in the University and on the street, at the labor table and in the backyard, I wonder if you could just for a minute speak about some of those differences that you've observed.

Answer:
Number one is that with street mediation, you're fighting and giving forth to prevent violence, reduce tension to the point where you can do the other. Hopefully, either you can come up with terms that are acceptable to both sides that will ultimately resolve the problem, or you can get them to become sane enough to stop the violence. So that's what you're trying to do. Ultimately, you want to get them to the point where they can sit down. As a mediator, even when it comes to table mediation, the beginning climate is so hostile that you're not going to get anything done the first few times, and you know that. I remember right here in this room, I was mediating a situation where the black police were charging discrimination in hiring, assignment, promotion, the whole bag. After Jackson was elected, he started to try to correct some of this and the white police filed a reverse discrimination suit and it had gone on for four or five years. Within the courts, the whole promotion process was tied down, the employment process was tied down, they were not hiring new police officers because they didn't have a system in place except through the courts. It had gone on for four or five years. The judge called me and said, "Mr. Sutton, this is Judge Moyer. We don't know each other." I said, "That's not quite so. You don't know me, but I know you. I've been in your court many times, and been in for the case you're talking about." He said, "I called to assign this case to you. For mediation." He didn't call to ask me to do it, he called to assign the case to me. "I want you to mediate this case and I shall tell the attorneys on both sides that I'm assigning this case to mediation. I'm assigning you to mediate." So I did. One team was represented by the black officers and their attorneys, and the other team was represented by white officers and their attorneys. We were right here in this room and that conference room over there. Things were so hot in the mediation and so volatile, that I decided to call a caucus right there. That's one of the techniques, caucus. I brought the black police officers here, and whites in the conference room. I assigned two staff members to the conference room and I took the black officers, because that's where the interest comes from and they were threatening to walk out. I walked up to the door and blocked the door. If anybody goes out of this room, he'll have to go over me. I know you're police officers and you really can go over me, but I don't think you want to do that. And that's what you're going to have to do. Nobody's going out of this room until we have at least agreed that you should go out. He said, "I've never seen a more determined person than you were. You stopped smiling, and that's the capacity that you have, you smile a lot. But boy, you stopped smiling so fast it got me sweating." Nobody's going out of this door unless they go over me.

Question:
So you gave them an opportunity for them to vent in a caucus or in the actual mediation?

Answer:
I wanted to clear up some issues in here before I went back in there. I wanted the opportunity to convince them that they were saying things that I would clear and that I personally would assure them. Now you're getting away from the processes and talking about 'I'. I said, "I don't think there's a man in this room that does not know that Ozell does not sell the interests of black folk short." I would not sell them short, and their interests short.

Question:
This is in caucus?

Answer:
This is in caucus. Now the only thing I'm talking about here is I will pursue those interests. In other words, your cause.

Question:
Did you feel that it was necessary to say that explicitly?

Answer:
It felt especially necessary to say that explicitly. To let them know that I knew. I even did something that a mediator does not do very often. I went back into my own personal credentials, personal identification and personal credentials, been there. So not only am I not going to sell you short, I'm not going to let that happen in mediation. That way I got them back in the room.

Question:
So there are two things I'm hearing. One is that in this instance, your own race and history was a significant trust building opportunity for them.

Answer:
Absolutely, and we say that in CRS. Sometimes, color itself is one of the greatest credentials to be in a room. Had nothing to do with exceptional ability, it has to do with our dignity. My identity with the struggle, not just my color, was the thing that nobody in the room could deny, and they knew that, and being black, I pursued the black struggle. It was long and every once in a while successful. I was able to convey that to them, and I do a lot of things.

Question:
Would you have said that to the white caucus?

Answer:
I made a demonstration with them when I got over there. I said I've been with the Justice Department a long time. I believe like Langston Hughes: "Justice delayed is justice denied." I'm here from a different angle, but you're talking about the same subject. I don't wish that you sacrifice your rights, I don't want anybody to sacrifice their rights. But let's get onto it. Here I go on another sermon, but from a different angle.

Question:
So you reframed the issue for them in the caucus?

Answer:
In words that they could connect to.

Question:
That's an important piece, the use of language as a trust building tool. One of the things that we like to ask about is neutrality and fairness and impartiality.

Answer:
I think I touched on that didn't I? The difference is, I am not neutral to injustice. No, I'm not that. I'm neutral to taking sides, and I make that point often. I'm like an umpire. An umpire does not take sides, he enforces the rules.

Question:
Did you ever at any time, either at Memphis, or the police case, feel that you absolutely had to take a side?

Answer:
Yeah. There have been times when I felt even after we did not get an agreement, that I should have taken sides. But then I know that's not the thing to do. I really try not to do that. But I say about mediation, like I used to say about newspaper, I can look at any story a reporter writes, and tell you what he felt. I don't care how hard he tried to be neutral, right? His own inner feelings get into the story, and he can't do anything about that. Down, deep down, somewhere. QUESTION ABOUT CONFIDENTIALITY

Answer:
They would be identified in terms of their actions, that's a different thing. To make things confidential is absolutely essential.

Question:
Can you think about any times when assurances of confidentiality might have gotten you into trouble, or weren't honored?

Answer:
Yes, I have had situations where people complain to Congress about my presence. I've had lots of those where they call their congressman. This is a small agency, it has a hard time surviving with strong congressmen. So I'm ever mindful of that, their position. But nevertheless, I take risks there too, if I decide that the risk is worth it. I do it, and I take whatever consequences it brings sometimes. I've been in those situations.

Question:
Can you give us an example, a confidentiality-violating example, without violating confidentiality?

Answer:
How do you give a confidentiality example without violating confidentiality? Just let me say it this way: what's most important is, the people with whom you're dealing know that what they say to you is not in danger. Under the confidentiality clause, we don't do a lot of publicizing. That way, if you don't make known to the public what you're doing, then nobody comes up and you don't have any support. It's like being in school. I had this problem one time. I thought the teacher had not given me the grade I was due. So when I went out to question that, she looked at me, and said, "now who are you?" How am I going to get the grade I'm due if she doesn't know me from Adam? I promised myself from that point on that would never happen to me again. I would never be so anonymous again, I guess that's the word. My teacher could look at me and immediately know who I was. From then on, I said, get attention, even if it's bad attention, it's better than no attention.

Question:
How does that work in terms of the media? How did you use or not use the media for your work?

Answer:
For example, I was down in a town about two months ago, a little town. There was a black group in that little town that was really prejudiced.. They have five hundred acres in that little town and, of course, they have all kinds of trouble out there. Because people are suspicious of what they are doing out there they call it a compound. They talk about it as another Waco. I went down, I had staff up and down two or three times, I went down. I first went to see the sheriff, as I usually do, and I went to see the mayor of the town, because I understand how powerful a sheriff is. Most especially in a rural town, the sheriff is the whole of constitutional law in the county. The mayor's not a constitutional authority, but the sheriff is. The major law enforcement responsibilities in the county are prescribed by the sheriff. So he is a power like nobody's business, and most especially in the rural county. So he is there, and they were complaining about harassment from the sheriff. So when I went out to that five hundred acre plot to meet with them, they were holding a press conference to complain about the sheriff. They immediately zeroed in on me. Number one, they knew me, and number two, I was from the Department of Justice. So they wanted to know what the Justice Department was going to do about this situation. Why was I there and who invited me there, and all of this. So I spoke to the media for about five minutes as the center of all the questions. It's better to say something than to say nothing in those kinds of situations, yet you try to say nothing but say something, I know that's hard to explain. What I did was to simply review and reiterate the CRS mandate. We were established by the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and that mandates us to assist communities resolve conflict. "Who invited you here?" According to our mandate, we don't need an invitation. At the moment we know that a conflict exists, we have a responsibility to get involved. "Did you come on your own notion, or did you come because somebody asked you to come?" I said I came of my own notion. When I said, "I came" I was highly indirect because CRS had been there already. What had occurred, then, that caused a big man to come down? The reporters said, "Mr. Sutton, we know who you are, we have seen you in many other places, so that's what we mean by "the big man." You don't go everywhere, you only come on certain conditions, so what's the conditions?"

Question:
And you weren't trying to help them, were you?

Answer:
No, and yet they did so. My staff had convinced me that I needed to come down here. They call me "boss". I won't even tell you why they call me boss all of the time. They said, "Boss, you need to come down." So I was explaining to them what the conditions were. "We're not talking about CRS" they said, "but we've got you here. You bring another level to it. What is occurring that raised the problem to the level where you would come?" That caused another whole discussion, right? The next day when the U.S. attorney for that district saw the front page of the paper with me standing in the middle of this group of reporters, in her district, she called Washington. Called our boss, said that I had gone down there and called a press conference, and boom, boom, boom. So my boss calls me at midnight. She said, "Ozell " I said "Yes? I know you didn't call at midnight just to say hello." "No, were you down there at the compound, weren't you?" I said, "Of course I was." When we travel, we do our travel authorization. Anytime anybody travels, I have to do the travel logs. "So don't ask me what you already know, you know I was there." She said, "The U.S. Attorney was very disturbed that you went down to the compound and called a press conference." I said, "I didn't call a press conference." She said, " but the U.S. Attorney said you did." I said, "I don't care what the U.S. Attorney is saying. You know that I don't lie." The head of investigation was waiting for me when I arrived, because they could not get into the area. The sheriff couldn't get into the area, because everyone was waiting for me to enable them to get into the compound. She said, "What's so special about you that you could get into the area?" I said, "When I arrived even those people knew who I was, and they wanted to tell me their story. It's just that simple. They want to tell me a story." I called from that little town and told them I was coming. They said, "Oh, you are Mr. Sutton." I said, "Yes, I am." "Staff members mentioned your name a dozen times. One of the things that he wanted to do was to get you down here, so we are so glad you're here." I said, "Thank you very much. I am thirty minutes from you, so I'll be out there." They met me at the gate. They wouldn't let the sheriff in, but not only did they let me in, but they welcomed me, right? Then when the press conference was occurring, I'll be the first to admit, I walked into it before I even noticed what it was. It was no big deal, so I told them some stuff. That's what occurred. I told them why we were there, they wanted to know what we were going to do, I said, "I don't know." But now I'm doing an assessment process, I don't know what we're going to do because we always follow an assessment and that's what we're doing and that's all I said. The media asked a lot of questions, but they all boiled down to the fact the CRS staff has been in, "What's brought you here?" I said I wanted to do a further assessment for myself. Because I'm the person who has to make the judgment as to what's going to be done. So this is the kind of thing that developed, and my boss calmed down.

Question:
Is that something akin to saving face?

Answer:
Oh yes, you have to allow folks to save face.

Question:
Talk some more about that.

Answer:
I will remind her that change is what she wants, so let's not spend all our time talking about the injustices of the past. Although we know that, that can resolve nothing. So let the party save face because that is the only way you can get something done because when you don't, you can forget it. It's about to be a standoff.

Question:
Even at your own expense? What are some things that you did in Memphis or in any of the other cases that we talked about to diminish the tension between the parties?

Answer:
The main thing is that you get the parties to formally set up rules of conduct that diminish the tension. During a march in Memphis I persuaded the city to pull the police back. I wanted them to pull the police back completely out of sight. "Because your very presence generates hostility and most especially your highly armed presence," I told them.

Question:
Did you just tell them flat out that they needed to move back?

Answer:
Yes, you tell them that, but you do it strategically. You explain to the chief that the marchers are policing themselves. They've got marshals to police themselves. They don't need you to police them, yet you are close enough, if something occurs, that you can get there in seconds. Your purpose would be better served if you were back out of sight. That's the way that you reduce tension. The police, they had a curfew and the police have a way of enforcing curfews among black folk. white folk can go on about their business uninterrupted, right? And yet the police run around, and every time they see a black, a car with a lot of blacks in it, they are running up there questioning that. Sticking their shot guns in the window and these kinds of things that provoke not only mistrust, but great anger. So I had to tell the governor, Rockefeller, at the time, and I said, "Governor, tonight I want you to go out in the black area with me." Naturally the rest of the staff hit the ceiling. "The governor go out there?" I say, "yeah, I'm out there and I don't know anyone more important than me." I said, "I want the governor to see how the police are conducting themselves." I said, "no mind can tell him, can describe what he's got to see. I'm not asking him to go out unprotected, his cars going to be, I'm sure, packed up with police in there. There's going to be a police car in front of him, unmarked I hope and one behind him. The governor just must see what's going on." And sure enough, he came out that night and I got in the car with him. And right in front of us was a group of blacks, five of them, who were hospital workers, right? They had a need to be coming through there. They lived in there and they got off at the hospital at 11:30 that night. So, the police immediately acted like they were criminals and violators after the curfew. The police stopped the car and, in a storm trooper kind of way, made them get out of the car, and you could hear the language, which was foul. They were called n*****s and all of that. I said, "Do you hear that governor? Do you see what I'm talking about?" He was so incensed the next morning he called together the chief of police, the head of the national guard unit, and all of those. He said, "Ozell persuaded me to get out," you see they didn't know, until then, that the governor was out in the field. Said, "Ozell persuaded me to go with him last night and I was so incensed! I just want you to know that your conduct out of there is just wild, and uncontrolled, and unnecessary." The mayor was there and he said, "Mr. Mayor, let me tell you one thing. I will take over this city. Ozell now told me there was a curfew and telling you and seeing it is a different matter. I will take over this city so quickly it will get you swimming in your head. Now I don't want any more conduct in that manner. I'm going to have the state police all out there where you are. Everybody is going to be reporting to me every 15 minutes, every time you stop a car I want to know what happened." And he talked about it, said, "Well, that group was one man and three women coming from the hospital," and they ran over there and stuck their guns in the window and made them get out of the car and were treated in such a way that nobody would want his wife treated. I am incensed by the whole thing." And the whole police methods changed after that. So I just go around describing it.

Question:
Was that a long lasting kind of change?

Answer:
Yes, because after the crisis was over the governor was insisting upon it. I had a whole criteria for police conduct and the police had to be trained, including shoot and don't shoot training. See when you get into this, you've got to know what you are doing, and you've got to know what can be done to treat it. The governor said, "also Mr. Mayor, the one other thing, I saw no black commanding officers. Now how do you account for all black flatfoots in the police department? Did you deliberately not assign them? Now, Mr. Mayor, I want from you, by the time we meet tomorrow, how many blacks are on your force and what level they are, and how they are assigned and what have you." We got more black police promotions out of that situation. Got the police a body of training at which I was the main lecturer.

Question:
When you were providing this technical assistance, did you use community resources, other consultants? How did you know who you should include in your training?

Answer:
Well, you gotta know that. That's the part of your body of knowledge in a sense. I pulled together the black leadership that was concerned about this issue and we drafted. I already had the plan ready when the crisis developed. I had already pulled a body together of black leaders and we had to come up with who could assist us, and who did we need to bring in. We brought in two people from this agency and one person from the F.B.I. We didn't want any local F.B.I. And we brought in five people who helped us design that plan and then helped us in the training process.

Question:
I think that's interesting because you say that you already had that developed. That's either very good foresight, a lot of confidence, or did you just see this as your next step as your role as a mediator? Was there a combination of all of those things?

Answer:
Well, at that time I was not a mediator. I was taking a leave from the CRS to be on the governor's staff. But because I had "been there, done that" with CRS, I knew what the next step needed to be. I also knew how to take advantage of a crisis to move things along.

Question:
How do you? Tell us the steps to take advantage of a crisis.

Answer:
Well, I do it all the time. Not only are you interested in resolving that particular crisis, you are interested in setting forth mechanisms to keep that crisis from re- occurring. And the next thing you are interested in establishing among people who before then had no power, you are interested in establishing in them a sense of power is the wrong word, but a sense of ways that they can protect themselves. In other words, you are empowering them. That's what I'm trying to say. And every time you ought to leave them empowered.

Question:
Yes, so you are strengthening their capacity.

Answer:
Oh yes. To deal with that problem, should it occur next week, or next year, or next ten years, that they aren't totally dependent on you, because you may not be in place. That they too can deal with it.

Question:
Hold that place and lets back up to empowerment. What are some techniques that you use to empower community members?

Answer:
Knowledge and know-how-- the ability to assess.

Question:
You taught them that? What did you teach them and how?

Answer:
You teach them how to locate resources. As I say, there are three levels of illiteracy, and only one of them is academic. Another one is systemic. How they use the system. Poor people and unempowered people are unempowered because they don't know how to use the system to their advantage. So they just go back and get mad about that. I have an old saying: Don't get mad, get even. Don't get mad is the same thing a preacher would say, don't curse the darkness, light a candle. And I call myself lighting a candle, teaching them how to utilize the system. The third area for illiteracy is that of race and ethnicity. We are so ignorant as it relates to race and other people beside ourselves. So I call that cultural illiteracy. We are culturally illiterate, we are academically illiterate, we are systematically illiterate, and when you put the three together, you can empower people. Blacks must learn how to solicit others in their fight. See, the question in America now is not just black and white, like it used to be. The Hispanics are coming in large numbers, as are Asians in this region. There is a greatly increased number of Asians in this region. From Cambodia, from Vietnam, and from other parts of the southeast Asia. I work with them and say, you know, "That's the Jewish community in there." The Hispanic community and you should get together. Go call on a leader with the Hispanic community. They have a natural kinship with you and so now they might not be willing to go as far as you are willing to go, because no one is willing to go as far as you're willing to go if it is your problem. So how to mobilize? I deal with black students on college campuses like that. How to be effective when you are a minority. Don't just sit back and say that white folk do this and white folk do that. They impose their decisions on us, get strategically into decision making bodies. Make sure someone from your group is on these bodies. You complain about spending all of the student activity fee and they won't bring anyone in that you want to come in and speak. Don't just sit back and complain, strategically get some of your people on the committee that disperses the money.

Question:
So knowledge of, as well as involvement in the system is important.

Answer:
That's true. It's important to know how to use it. Until you benefit like everyone else. Otherwise the majority uses it to its benefit.

Question:
Just in terms of the criminal justice system and taking this model of empowerment, what thoughts might you have about black people, particularly young black people, specifically black males in the criminal justice system?

Answer:
In my speaking, I say that I would offer you the three B's for empowerment. The book, (education), the ballot, (political action), and the book. You can remember the book, (the Bible). The book, the ballot, and the book. Black folk are not poor. There are a lot of poor among us, but as a people, we ain't poor. We have lots of money. My black folk now. We'll be thirty-five million strong. That's larger than 90% of the nations in the world. We've got something going for us, and we are going to hook it up right? So, we are thirty-five million strong, we are the best educated in the world. I'm talking about black Americans now. Looking at my sister now, working to get her doctorate. That isn't easy. You know, it really isn't. The number of blacks working on their doctorates are increasing every year. So we've got something going for us. We would be a 5 hundred billion dollar market, just black folk alone, which is bigger than the gross national product of 90% of the nations in the world. If we were a nation just to ourselves, we would be the 4th largest nation in the Western Hemisphere. North and South America. We would be exceeded only by the United States, by Mexico and Brazil. I want a gross national product as big as all but the United States. Even with Canada. No other nation in North or South America has the buying power that we have. So, we should stop going around, I guess you noticed that I'm always making biblical references, because we ain't no grasshoppers.

Question:
Why do you think we are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system?

Answer:
Because we allow it to occur.

Question:
Speak some more about that.

Answer:
The ballot, is one of the greatest tools that we've disposed of. We have suffered for it, we have died for it, but we have not used it.

Question:
So we are systematically illiterate.

Answer:
I was speaking to a black man the other day and I said, "if anybody would have told me, when I was running through Mississippi and Louisiana, running from the Klan, so I could get the right to vote for black folk, that we weren't going to vote anyway." It is so disheartening. I said if white folk had known that we weren't going to vote anyway, they wouldn't have been running after me. This is the way I speak, when I look at our level of participation in the system that we could use to solve many of our problems. I said, "did you know that many of our judges are elected, not appointed? I was working in a little town in Georgia not long ago, and black folk were complaining about police brutality and all of that, and when I looked, they were sixty-five percent of the population." I said, "white folk ought to be complaining about police brutality." Not that I think that black folk ought to be brutal, that's not what I'm talking about. You got sixty-five percent of the population, they only got thirty-five, and you don't have a single person on the Police Commission. By extension, if we are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, the answer is, we need to be in the decision making aspect of the criminal justice system. That's what we got to do.

Question:
That's the next question I was going to ask. It seems that we allow ourselves to be put in that situation, but there has to be some precipitating factors that get a person to that state of mind. They must feel either it's not going to do any good anyway, or I don't know the proper channels, or something.

Answer:
Most of it is simple history and custom. Never thought you could get there, that kind of thinking is what's so damaging to us. Never been able to get aroused and move in and know that we can make a difference. We really don't believe that we can. Getting back to that same grasshopper position, you remember when the Israelites got into Egypt and when the leader sent out a scouting party to scout out the land? There were twelve of them, and they came back, ten of them said that there are giants over there. We can't possess the land, there are giants and we are but grasshoppers in their sight. They weren't only grasshoppers, and two of them knew that. They said, "not only can we possess the land, we must possess the land." They were so fortunate that they had leadership that didn't take the ten's view of their situation, but the two. That's strictly our mentality, we see ourselves as grasshoppers. The problems are so vast out there, there's nothing that I can do about it. As an individual, no, but as a part of a group, yes. We have never been able to develop that sense of unity, sense of purpose, sense of direction that it takes to succeed. Even now, with all that we've been through, less than fifty percent of us are registered to vote. And less of fifty percent of those who are registered do vote. So that means that only about twenty-five percent of us do vote. And most especially among, excuse the expression, your generation. I'm so disheartened by our youth, and maybe that's my fault, I don't know, but...

Question:
I was going to say, there's a definite connection between some of the unanticipated consequences and the criminal justice system, when you think about how many African- American young males, are incarcerated. That's a large percentage of the population behind bars right there.

Answer:
You are so right about that. Once you get caught up in the justice system, you cannot vote. And most of them behind bars are not supposed to be behind them in the first place. We don't seem to understand. We g