'I Was Barely 14'

Lurma Rackley | Tyrone, Georgia

Not long after the all-white education officials in South Carolina declined to renew my father's contract at the black state college and declared my mother unfit to be a third-grade teacher, all because of their leadership in the Civil Rights Movement, I was arrested for the 20th time for walking the picket lines in protest of segregated public accommodations and unequal opportunity in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

Normally, NAACP lawyers managed to get juvenile arrests dismissed immediately and young people rotated right back out to fill picket lines downtown. But because my arrests had been so frequent, this time I was taken to a makeshift prison at the town's armory with about 40 adult women; the regular jail already overflowed with protesters. Before my mother could secure my release, I had spent a week there.

By the time my mother and I showed up for my court date a few weeks later, we'd both been back to picket repeatedly, and my mother was a party to several civil rights lawsuits. When we entered the courthouse, we defied the separate but highly unequal restroom policy, electing to relieve ourselves in the whites-only ladies' room.

"(...) because my arrests had been so frequent, this time I was taken to a makeshift prison at the town's armory with about 40 adult women."

Once inside the courtroom, we faced a raging judge who aimed his vengeful comments at my mother and me. "I love all children, black and white; treat 'em both the same, feed 'em out the same spoon. But this girl has come here too many times, so I'm sending her to reform school 'til she's 21." I was barely 14. Our lawyer, Matthew Perry, immediately filed an appeal.

Shaken, although she didn't let the judge see, my mother encouraged me to hang up my picket sign and contribute to the movement in some way that wouldn't leave me vulnerable to instant activation of the sentence. But I couldn't do that. After all, wasn't I the daughter of parents who risked their jobs, their home, and their very lives in the movement? Hadn't my slender sister been thrown bodily out of a lunch counter sit-in? Hadn't my grandparents engaged in countless acts of bravery, including driving their small-town neighbors to vote, years before the movement launched in full force? Wasn't I inside Trinity Methodist Church at rallies when Rev. Matthew McCollum and Rev. I. DeQuincey Newman talked of sacrifice, commitment, faith, justice, honor, and brotherly love? Didn't I know all the verses to movement songs?

I pleaded my case. My mother understood. I returned to the picket lines with my schoolmates, our faces forward, following Rev. McCollum's advice to hold no hatred in our hearts.

A week later, President John F. Kennedy was killed. We walked the lines with tears streaming down our faces as a few white teens drove by hurling insults and cheering the loss we so deeply mourned.