Intermountain General Baptist Association

Any stories about, about Reconstruction or what, you know what it was like in those days between the (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) One of the stories that my mother [Julia Cooper Davis] told us almost daily was about an activity with her family and the Ku Klux Klan [KKK], and there're two of those stories. One of them is that her uncle's wife was walking and refused to step off, out of the way of some white ladies that was walking in the town of Waynesboro [Georgia] and that when she came home that evening that night the Ku Klux Klan showed up to get her. Her husband interfered, who was my uncle, and they then took him down to the local African American Baptist church and put him inside, set the church in fire, and he was never seen again. The other story was that my mother's father [July Cooper] got somehow in trouble with the Klan when she was just a small baby and as a result of that the Klan came and sat on their porch waiting for him to come home and he came home later in the evening, but before he came, he never did come home that night. He always came home after dark, and so my grandmother [Scoatney Scott Cooper] sent one of the children, she had sixteen of them. It was easier to send one out and not miss, that would not be missed out the back door to meet him and tell him not to come home and his life was saved because he never came home that night. But the Klan was sitting on his porch, on their porch, my parents, my mother's grand- my mother's parents' porch waiting for him to come home. And he didn't come home for several days.$$I suppose the Klan didn't have any idea how many children were really there anyway.$$They didn't have any idea how many children were there and they certainly wouldn't miss one. There were just so many of them, and so they didn't miss that one.$$Okay, now that's, that's cert- those stories certainly tell you something about the atmosphere--$$Yes.$$--in that part of Georgia.$$Yeah, yeah.$I have a note here that says--oh did somebody actually, now you were involved in the, making Martin Luther King's [Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.] birthday a holiday?$$Yes.$$Right.$$Nineteen eighty-three [1983] Congress passed the law and President Reagan [President Ronald Wilson Reagan] signed the federal law making Martin Luther King holiday [Martin Luther King Jr. Day], Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday on the federal side. Utah was one of the states that decided that that federal law would not work for them, did not apply to them, and so we had to get a separate bill introduced in the state legislature here in Utah. Senator Terry Williams was the only African American in the legislature at the time. He sponsored the bill, I then took it as chair of a committee to educate and agitate on behalf of the passage of the bill and eventually had a debate with the Representative Robert Sykes [Robert B. Sykes], S-Y-K-E-S who was opposed to the bill. I debated him on television, and at the end of the debate he volunteered to help sponsor the bill.$$So you convinced him?$$Convinced him in the debate that this is something worthwhile, that it's good for everybody. And he sponsored it and the bill passed. We brought Mrs. King [Coretta Scott King] out, and she spoke to the legislature.$$Now what argument did you offer that would actually change the mind of someone that bent on stopping the bill?$$Well a number of their initial arguments against the holiday were erroneous. They were arguing or not proving. They were arguing that Martin Luther King was a womanizer, that he was a drunken, that he never did anything for Utah, that he never came to Utah and that it was an African American holiday. So, those were their arguments. I simply countered all of those. I reminded them as far as Martin Luther King's coming to Utah that he was on the front page of their own newspaper right here in Salt Lake in Salt Lake City [Utah]. I also pointed out to them that what he did in, in the country was manifested more for white women in Utah than it was for African Americans. They were the minority in Utah, white women, so I pointed that out. I also argued with them that, they, they said that there was no holiday for Brigham Young and that if there was gonna be a holiday for anybody, there ought to be one for him. And I suggested to them that we would exchange the holiday for a city called Brigham City that's in Utah and of course they wasn't about to do that, so.$$Okay, but you convinced Robert Sykes to back?$$Yes.$$Okay, now this--$$I saw him by the way just about a month ago, and he reminded me that, that it was that interactions with him that caused him to be the man that he is today.$$Okay and, but this activity was not without its dangers (simultaneous).$$(Simultaneous) Absolutely not.$$Someone shot up your office I heard.$$Shot my office up. I had seventeen bullet holes in my office. I got threatened, threatening letters all of the time. The worse one came to my home as well as to my office, and they promised to pour gasoline on me and take me out to the Great Salt Lake and drown me and if that didn't work they'd take me back to Africa. So, it was not without danger. My wife [Willene Witt Davis] and children [Carolyn Davis, Grace Davis and France Davis] were afraid.$$The last threat didn't seem so bad I mean to take you to Africa.$$Take you back to Africa (laughter).$$That would have been--$$That would have been good for me. It would have been like throwing the rabbit in the briar patch (simultnaoeus).