It was the summer of 1966. Embry and I were at a civil rights mass meeting in Baker County, Georgia, sweltering in the heat. Baker County at the time was described as the “meanest, nastiest, and cruelest” county in Georgia at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. We had been married only six months and were only in our early 20s. Born and bred in the South (Tennessee and North Carolina), here we were on our “honeymoon,” sitting in a packed church for a mass meeting of “the movement.” The topic of the mass meeting was what to do with us.
A couple of weeks before we had driven down from New York City in a caravan of a dozen Union Seminary students, all white, who had been inspired by our classmate, Charles Sherrod, a dynamic African American in his early 30s, who was one of the founders of SNCC, at the time considered to be the most radical of all the civil rights groups. Embry was the only female, and we were the only married couple. What most of us Union students would be doing that summer was registering Black voters. Some thought that task would be too dangerous for a young, white woman, so the question was what to do with us. Plus, there was a desperate need for white people to integrate the staff of the Head Start program, which was scheduled to begin in Baker County in a matter of days. Unless there were there were more white people involved, the federal government had threatened to freeze the funds. Since there was no chance of getting any local white person to volunteer, it seemed to be a natural for us.
The problem was that for us to help with Head Start we would have to live in “Bad Baker County,” near the site for the Head Start program in Newton, the county seat. Newton was in the middle of the huge county, about 50 miles from Albany where the headquarters for the movement was. There was no way we could commute. Newton had been the scene of lynchings and Ku Klux Klan activity for decades. Many African Americans had died. Why would anyone take the risk of providing us a place to stay?
It was a bit embarrassing to be the subject of these mass meetings. People were being asked to put their lives on the line to take us in. We could understand why there were no takers and felt guilty for putting them in this bind. But there we were, and besides, they needed Head Start. And if going door to door to register voters was considered too dangerous for Embry (and for me, for that matter!), what else were we going to do?
Several people spoke of the dangers of housing a white couple. A younger SNCC worker got up and shouted, “The hell with Head Start and to hell with whites in the movement!” The movement now was all about Black Power, he pleaded. Whites were no longer welcome. Sherrod spoke up again. It was now or never, he argued, and Head Start was too important for Black children to let the opportunity go to waste. Sherrod told the radical SNCC organizer that some might think white people should not be involved in the movement, but here white people were, risking their lives for civil rights. We should be allowed to stay and someone should volunteer to take us in.
We did not know it at the time, but this was an existential moment for SNCC. Behind the scenes there was a battle for the leadership and direction of the organization with Stokley Carmichael on one side and John Lewis and Charles Sherrod on the other. The key issue had to do with the role that well intentioned, white people should play. Stokely won out, moving the organization toward Black Power, excluding bleeding heart, white people like Embry, me, and my classmates at Union.
The mass meeting wore on into the night with people sweltering and the constant sounds of fans twirling and crickets chirping outside. Embry and I became more apprehensive. Obviously there would no local white volunteers and this was the last chance to recruit white people if Head Start was going to happen. Mass meetings had been held in several other Black churches in the county where the issue was raised. No takers. We were about ready to give up.
Then in the back of the packed room, a large Black woman in her mid 30s rose and quietly said, “I’ll take them.” It was Dovanna Holt, the mother of two teenage boys and married to Jack Holt, a man in his sixties, almost totally blind but still farming the 50-acre tract given to his ancestors by their slave owner at the end of the civil war. There was a brief hush in the room and then a scattering of applause. One of the younger SNCC workers, who was the most outspoken about the role of white people in the movement, stormed out of the room.
That was how we began the long, hot summer of 1966—living with the Holt family, helping with Head Start, attending civil rights strategy meetings where young SNCC workers talked about how bad all white people were and that Black Power now ruled the movement. We were aids in the Head Start program, which was headed (ironically) by a very sharp white woman, who had taught in one of New York City’s elite private kindergartens. It was great work and we loved it. And we loved the Holts. We were totally isolated from local white people and saw only a few all summer. A few weeks after we moved in, a third Union Seminary volunteer moved in and slept in the room with the two teenage sons. Years later he became a famous legal aid lawyer in Nashville and has remained one of our good friends.
The Holt house was modest with no indoor plumbing and part of a four or five-house enclave at the end of a dirt and sandy road, which to us seemed like the wilderness. The families were all related, had small farms of 40 or 50 acres each, and enjoyed doing activities together. We attended church with them on Sunday mornings and on evenings during the week, accompanied them to movement meetings, and hung out with them on weekends. We joined the Holt family pig roast that lasted all night for the Fourth of July annual Holt family picnic with a dozen relatives coming from all over Georgia and north Florida.
Embry and I in the afternoons following Head Start sat through a murder trial that lasted most of the summer where a white man who had killed an African American man in cold blood got off Scot free from a white jury that only spent about an hour deliberating.
Years later we attended the 25th reunion of the Civil Rights Movement in Albany and Southwest Georgia when we were able to reunite with old friends and with Noah and Nathaniel, the two sons of Dovanna and Jack Holt. While we were concerned about the future of the two boys, both went on to finish college, were married, had families, and were doing well. The oldest son had a master’s in finance from Stanford University, and his wife had an MBA from there as well. He went on to become the president and COO of the largest railroad in California. His wife became the CFO of the Bay Area Blue Cross Blue Shield. They recently had retired and moved recently to Albany, living in a city that had radically changed. Charles Sherrod was now on the city council!
We learned then the story of the close call that had happened the summer in 1965, the year before we arrived, when a dozen Klansmen surrounded the Holt house with weapons drawn. When they found out that in the Holt House all the families on their street had assembled and were armed, the grand dragon called off the assault. When we asked why no one had told us about this when we were there, Noah, the older son replied. “No one wanted to make you afraid.”
Our civil rights journey was an experience of a lifetime.
I kept a diary of the experience of the summer of 1966, and in 2011 published a book, Civil Rights Journey, through Author House, which used a lot of the material from the diary (available to purchase online in hardback or paperback from Amazon. Cheap.).