Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [71]
The Aid the Monroe Defendants Committee learned that in late 1961, counselor Lynn got permission from the State Department to go to Havana and interview Robert Williams about the affairs in Monroe. They also learned that Dr. Perry’s credit had been cut off and that he had been banned from the practice of medicine in Union County, of which Monroe was the seat. And they heard of one of the more incredibly ugly incidents carried out by the FBI (since Williams was an international fugitive and accused of kidnapping, the federal agency entered the case) and local law enforcement officials: Robert Williams’s aunt died, and the lawmen came into the funeral chapel and pasted a “Wanted” poster, with a photo of Robert, on the casket.12 This utterly outrageous behavior became the subject of jokes and guffaws in this hateful community for several weeks to come.
Genora’s committee publicized Monroe, North Carolina, pointing out the constitutional deprivations that blacks suffered at the hands of white tormenters. The committee wanted the U.S. Justice Department to intervene in the matter, but both Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his chief assistant, Burke Marshall, declined involvement. “The entire civil rights movement will be struck a severe blow,” Genora reported, “if the Monroe racists are successful in victimizing these young people because they dared protest the Jim Crow laws.”13 The Monroe defendants were ultimately released on bail with money Genora helped to raise. Their cases were postponed from one month to another and then from one year to another. Their status remained in limbo throughout the civil rights years and then, as in so many instances, most were quietly dropped.
After Monroe, Genora soon experienced another dose of racism. Sol’s new employment enabled them to take more vacations than before, and as the sixties progressed, Mexico increasingly became their haven, particularly Acapulco. On one trip, Genora had a firsthand experience with the “demented minds” of the Ku Klux Klan as it existed at the time in southern states. (She had met the mother of Mississippi murder victim Emmet Till at the NAACP Flint office.) As they drove through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama, they “saw all the expected signs of white supremacy.” Nonetheless, Mississippi shocked her the most. They stopped at a roadside eatery for coffee, and even before being served, someone had told the owner their Michigan state tag number. The Michiganders noted a revolver on a shelf and innocently asked if it were real. This started the Mississippian on a tirade. “Yes, it’s real,” he asserted, and then added ominously, “and loaded.” He told the Dollingers a story, a “tale of terror” that made Genora’s “blood run cold,” about the “vile and blind hatreds of the KKK for anyone wanting citizenship for the Negro.” It seems, as the white proprietor told it, that a black man, his wife, and their six children had stopped at another greasy spoon a few days before and tried to order food. The restaurant owner ordered them out of his establishment because of strict segregation laws and then called the police. The local constable found the black man a few miles down the road, once again trying to feed his family. The constable shot the black man in the stomach and he died the next day. The man telling the story to Genora and Sol expressed support for what the police had done, saying repeatedly that he wished he had been the one to pull the trigger. Leaving, “with our coffee turning bitter-poison in our stomachs,” Genora vented her emotions to Sol. “A father comes for food and his little ones wind up without a father? Why isn’t the NAACP ten times stronger than it is? Why isn’t every Negro and every white liberal a member?