May 07, 2020 - Sale 2534

Sale 2534 - Lot 206

Price Realized: $ 1,188
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(CIVIL RIGHTS.) Audio tapes of a radio interview with leaders of the Atlanta Student Movement. Pair of reel-to-reel tapes, each 7 inches across, bearing typed labels reading "Human Rights Interview" and one with typed date, one with sticker reading "Not for broadcast or commercial use"; light scuffing to the tape reels. Each in original mailing boxes. With digital file of both tapes on a thumb drive. Atlanta, GA, 8 June 1961

Additional Details

This interview features four young leaders of the Atlanta Student Movement during the heyday of nonviolent direct action and lunch-counter sit-ins. The previous October, Martin Luther King was arrested with the students, resulting in the first full night he spent in jail. The interview was conducted for the Protestant Hour, a long-running weekly radio program which was produced in Atlanta but broadcast by hundreds of stations across the county (and continues today as Day1). The interviewer's name is unknown, though it is clearly a white man. His guests were all local college students or recent graduates, Herschelle Sullivan (later Challenor) of Spelman, Benjamin Brown of Clark Atlanta, and Charles Black and Lonnie C. King Jr. of Morehouse. All four went on to distinguished careers in politics and activism.
In the interview, the students are eloquent and poised in the face of sometimes aggressive questions such as "Do you feel that the Negro is ready for integration?" The principles and tactics of non-violence are a main point of interest, with Lonnie King explaining that the goal is "replacing hate with love," causing the "opponent that is inflicting the violence to question his own conscience." Black cites Gandhi as the main inspiration, adding "it has been perpetuated here with our own Martin Luther King." Sullivan clarifies the role of their mentor: "Dr. King is not the leader of the Atlanta Student Movement. He insists on taking a back seat. He never calls on us, but he is always there if we call on him." Sullivan addresses a common misperception about training sessions for these sit-ins: "We don't have torture sessions in Atlanta. . . . We do not slap students around to see what their reaction will be. . . . We want to condition the mind." However, a colleague adds that participants are told of the dangers, including death: "We plead with them that they shouldn't go into this if they are seeking publicity."
The students dispute the assertion that activism might undermine their studies, citing students who have won scholarships even after being jailed. All of the students make appeals to patriotism: "If America is predicated on the idea of equality, justice, freedom of speech for all people, the responsibility lies with the Negro people to make democracy not a myth but a reality," with Sullivan even adding in the wake of the Red Scare that "Discrimination is the greatest weapon the Communists have over us."
Offered here are two tapes of the interview. The first version begins with the interview apparently about two minutes underway, and continues for 59 minutes. The second is apparently a version which has been edited for broadcast. It is 28 minutes long, preceded and followed by a few seconds of test tone (the Protestant Hour was oddly enough only 30 minutes long); some of the segments have apparently been rearranged. These tapes were mailed to "Mrs. P.Q. Yancey" of Atlanta--the fuller version just 11 days after it was recorded, and the edited version a month later on 19 July. The recipient was Clothilde Labat Yancey (1914-1972), wife of Dr. Prentiss Quincy Yancey. She was a founder of the Atlanta Junior Voters League, and had just a few months prior been named Atlanta's "Bronze Woman of the Year" according to Jet Magazine, 16 February 1961.