Could you tell us about, in Slick [Oklahoma], what--was it an all-black town or was it (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) No.$$--mixed or what was the relationship between the, the races there?$$Slick was a town, predominantly white town as was the area surrounding it 'cause Slick was not just a town it was surrounding area of all the people related psychologically, sociologically to each other, and so I was in that and they were--we were set apart, we knew each other, everybody knew each other, at least you didn't know them personally, you knew who they were and you spoke to everybody even if you passing them from behind as strangers, white and black strangers would, would speak, unlike here in the, in the, in the city. And so, we--was very much separated it was like a terror 'cause they might lynch you at any moment at the drop of the hat, we, we knew people that had been lynched and we knew, heard of it and Oklahoma had a high lynching rate because of the combined both the West and South and, and so, we had that there. We couldn't ride in the front of the bus, we couldn't sit and eat in a restaurant and all that, and we had separate schools and, and separate buses and when we were walking to school if our bus was broken down, which usually was the case on a rainy day, then the white bus would pass by and they--they would try to--the driver tried deliberately to run in the water skid water on us kids as we pass by and the white kids would, would lean out and say--call us niggers and we'd call them peckerwoods and things like that, yell at them and stuff, and back and forth and it would keep on going. And, and so that was the kind of way it, it was. If we pass one we'd, we'd usually get in some kind of fight, it was almost like a, a kid play too-fun thing too because you got a great joy out of doing battle with them a little bit (laughter). But, but so it was, it was like that and when I was ten years old, my mother [Tishia Lee Davis]--well there was a bus getting ready to go between Slick and Bristow [Oklahoma], it went for maybe a year or two and my mother said, "Well this is going to--it's going to be segregated we're not going to be able to ride up front and that's not right," and, but, but--by chance she sent us to--with a bucket of cream you could skim it off the milk over time and then sold the cream in the town ten miles away and we'd get things to buy stuff with, money, and we'd take ten cents apiece to go to what they called nigger heaven, which was the balcony of the movie theater that they allowed black people in. They had two theaters and one they allowed black people in, sit upstairs, sometimes we'd throw paper down on the white peoples head (laughter) but anyway-who did it, or where. But any case we went to nigger heaven and so--but I sat on--at, at the front seat when I got on the bus 'cause mother said it was going to be wrong, but a driver pleaded me for thirty minutes, I'd say, to, to move and I wouldn't move, my little brother [Carl Hare] was scared he was leaning over my shoulder because he was scared. The ruckus was going on, he kept pleading but I rode. He would not--I would not leave and he would not bother me, and then mother come 'round with a shotgun and so therefore we ro- I did this, you're talking about '43 [1943], this is thirteen years before Montgomery [Bus Boycott] and so I always had the policy after that to not go past rear of center. I would stand in the front rather than go to the back to sit and I did it all over and I tell, you know, anecdotes about it (laughter), but certainly--I was in Oklahoma not Georgia, maybe Georgia I wouldn't be here to tell the story but that's the way it was down there then.$You had some very interesting students at Howard [University, Washington, D.C.]--$$Yeah.$$--Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture] and some other people, could you--$$Claude Brown is the most known--$$Claude Brown, right.$$--he wrote, 'Manchild in the Promised Land' and he was taking my class then, yeah (simultaneous).$$(Simultaneous) Right, right, and you said the people that were in SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]?$$Yeah.$$So, this was the beginning of black power, and the beginning of the student--$$Well, before, yeah--$$--student movement (simultaneous)--$$--(simultaneous) before black power but, but it was, it was about two or three years later--$$Right.$$--they, they formed black power. Things were turning blacker you might say, and blacks were getting the consciousness out of the Berkley [University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California]--University of Cal, Berkley free speech movement, in fact, Art Goldberg had come to Howard, he looked me up in the (unclear), he in there to go to law school, he said, "I heard you're one of the good guys and I'm going here now to law school at Howard 'cause I couldn't go to Berkley," I said, "If I couldn't go to Berkley, I was gonna bring Berkley here to Howard" (laughter) and so he came here and so I had to--all those people were there. And then things were getting a little more concerned, people were perking their ears about what I--they always started perking their ears up about what I was saying, not about race alone, but about other things in general. 'Cause I took the same approach to everything, not just race and so, he--they would be in this--I remember Stokely Carmichael saying to somebody that my notion of a closed ranks approach, modeled after [W.E.B.] Du Bois, but a turning within yourself to beef up yourself and then to confront the, the wall of segregation was the best thing going. But, but first time I ever saw Stokely was when I came there and he was standing--somebody had taken me by the NAG office, Nonviolent Action Group, which was the name of Friends of SNCC because the administration would not let them have a Friends of SNCC group there on campus, but they had to call it Nonviolent Action Group and so a young fellow sat down with us saying--he said, "I don't believe in this nonviolence, but there's nothing else going on so I guess, I'm fooling with that now," and that was Stokely Carmichael I learned later. And so they were there and he was a very good student. I knew he would be outstanding no matter what he had gone into, he could have been a very great mainstream senator or whatever. He--when--I never was surprised, people said were you surprised at, at Stokely Carmichael, I said no, he was two, two years overdue. In fact when Claude Brown, who was a surprise, Claude Brown was always telling me he was writing his autobiography, he had written an article in, in det- detalis- Dissent magazine, called 'Growing Up in Harlem.' He's writing this book on growing up in Harlem, which later on became 'Manchild in the Promised Land,' but I said, "Yeah, yeah, well, I'll leave him alone," because I really didn't think he was really doing anything and so he came out with this book and it became a best seller. And then Stokely Carmichael came by, and he came by my class when he was visiting here, he wasn't famous then and he said--I said, "What do you think of--," going down the hall later, I said, "What do you think about Claude Brown writing that book?" And so he said, "Well, if Claude Brown can do it, anybody can do it." It become so famous I said--writing that book--become so famous he said, "If Claude Brown can do it anybody can do it." Within a year he came back there and we invited him to speak and you couldn't get into the whole building because of, because the people, he had become famous with the black power. But I knew he was going to be outstanding. He was the best student I'd ever had.$$I see.$$He was, he was unusual.
