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On September 6, 1965, thirteen Black students stepped onto the campus of Lanier Jr. High School for Boys in Macon, Georgia to begin the 1965-66 school year. The school built in 1948 for the education of white boys braced itself for a historical moment. The thirteen youngsters were the first of their race to enroll in this junior high school. Across Bibb County that morning over 240 Black students attended classes for the first time with white students.
Greetings Mr. Harvey, educator, coach, baseball legend, author, journalist, lawyer, defender, organizer, trailblazer, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS, my hero and so many wonderful things to so many people.
I am honored to have met you. Thank you for your selfless service and contributions to our community. Thanks for sharing yourself and talents with the world.
Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance by Harold Michael Harvey is more than a simple memoir of a movement of resistance.
It’s a love story about the author’s family and it is through that lens where we discover that the spirit of resistance that resides deep in Harvey’s soul, didn’t just happen but was born out of centuries of struggle – and the urge – no the need to resist.
This memoir connects the dots from Plessy to Brown to Obama and the quest of millennials to throw off the shackles of the Curse of Plessy and the unkept Promise of Brown.
Freaknik is not quite as freaky as it sounds. Certainly, Freaknik Lawyer is not about a lawyer getting his freak on when the lights go off.
Six thousand words in the books today. My best work to date in terms of style, pacing, and content. “Freaknik Lawyer,” coming soon.
Charles Steele, Jr. was 22 years old on the day that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the third-floor balcony of a colored motel in Memphis, Tennessee. By that time, King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference had won two important victories.
First, congressional passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This measure opened areas of public accommodations to the nation’s Negro citizens. Despite King’s work in this area, on his April 1968 visit to Memphis, he chose to patronize the Black-owned Lorraine Motel.
Note: This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book on the meaning of Memphis fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr.
In Memphis, “The King” may be Elvis, but the city since April 4, 1968 has been defined by what happened to “A King” on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel outside of room 306.
Like Dallas, Texas, Memphis, Tennessee suffers from a sense of metaphysical guilt over the blood, in this instance, of a King, who came in peace and was slain in its city. No city leader wants this type of tragedy to occur in their geopolitical space. It simply is not good for business; and if not good for business, city leaders walk on eggshells to cleanse their collective guilt for a crime committed within their political subdivision; and some may argue with their acquiescence.
Ralph Worrell was a servant warrior. Like any warrior he was tenacious. But he was above all else a servant. He embodied the spirit of the drum major Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached was necessary to be first in the kingdom.
Worrell was born in Barbados 88 years ago. His ancestors were among those Africans who could not be broken for service as a slave in America.
They did not make it to the mainland during the period of enslavement. The slaveholders feared Africans with the warrior spirit would revolt thereby toppling the free labor system which drove the American economy.
At an early age, Worrell moved to New York where he became active in a Black labor union. He organized Black union members to fight for their fair share of jobs.
Around 1964, Worrell’s union sought to lend a hand to Blacks in the south who were fighting for justice and equality. They sent Worrell to work alongside Dr. King. He was instructed to assist King in whatever manner he deemed necessary. The union paid his salary on Dr. King’s staff.
Worrell was essentially what we call a “body man” today. He was Dr. King’s body man. He unselfishly did whatever it took to make King comfortable. And when the word was given it was time to march, Worrell was ready to go.
One could say he was the spook who sat by the door. Spook not in the sense of a spy, but a ghostly figure, who was always present, but never calling attention to himself, yet forever ready to spring into action and be of service to the president of the organization or a guest waiting to see the president.
For 54 years Worrell was first in rendering service to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was the straw that stirred the SCLC drink. He turned the lights off in the evening and turned them back on at the beginning of a new day.
Worrell served all of the SCLC presidents from King to Charles Steele, Jr., who eulogized Worrell as “a man who served with an empty pocket, but was always ready to be of service to somebody else.”
Perhaps no figures cast a larger shadows over the work of SCLC than King and Worrell.
Worrell died last week. Two weeks before the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King.
When the servant warrior set out for home, there were no network television cameras at Cascade United Methodist Church to witness it. No one from the Pulitzer Prize winning daily newspaper in town was present to record Worrell’s farewell.
The media did not know that nothing was done at SCLC in the last 54 years without the aid and service of Ralph Worrell. You can google him and his name will not come right up.
He did not want to take credit for what he was doing. He did not have a need to feel important. He wanted to do God’s will. He did his work quietly, gracefully, expertly, tenaciously.
“What I learned from Mr. Worrell is wisdom,” said Samuel Mosteller a longtime member of SCLC.
“I traveled all over Louisiana one year with Mr. Worrell. I got to know him pretty good. He did not speak unless he knew what he was talking about. He would study an issue until he knew what was going on.”
Mosteller said that many people thought Worrell was a mere driver and were not aware of his many contributions to the movement.
“He was very smart, but he did not care to show it. The only reason he was the driver is because he came south to Atlanta to do whatever made Dr. King’s job easier. After Dr. King was assassinated he stayed and did what he could to help Dr. Abernathy [Ralph David] and the rest of the presidents, Mosteller said.
According to Maynard Eaton, Communications Director for SCLC, Worrell got his name in the newspaper one time. That was recently. A story that Eaton pitched to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
“He was real pleased with that. It made him happy. I am glad that I pitched that story to the AJC,” Eaton said.
In his eulogy, Dr. Steele promised the spirit of Ralph Worrell,”we will continue to march.”
Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, President Emeritus of SCLC said, “Ralph was my friend. He always made me comfortable. He drove me most places I went.”
Then Lowery’s voice cracked: “I am going to miss Ralph for the rest of my days. So long Ralph, I will see you in the morning.”
Following the service, the 95 year-old Lowery without Worrell to drive him any longer, drove his motorized wheelchair down the driveway of the church to his home about 100 yards across the street.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com
“SCLC is the only organization that Dr. King ever organized,” bellowed Charles Steele, Jr., President and Chief Executive Office of the International Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to a packed church on the outskirts of Tuscaloosa, Alabama last spring.
In spite of this fact the name of SCLC was not mentioned during an unveiling of a statue of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the grounds of the Georgia state capitol on the 54th anniversary of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
During an hour and a half cermony with all of the solemnity fit for a man of Dr. King’s prominence there was not one single recognition of the role that SCLC played in his march towards immortality. None, not one single word, not one single letter.
Steele was not invited to participate in the ceremony. He did not attend it. Instead, Steele participated in the 1000 Ministers March on Washington called by Rev. Al Sharpton three weeks ago following the Charlottesville riot.
His chief of staff and Maynard Eaton, the SCLC Director of Communications were present. However, neither of them were recognized or asked to bring an expression on behalf of the organization that legitimized the work of Dr. King.
In many respects, SCLC continues to carry forth the work of Dr. King today. This may be the rub. Community leaders like to portray that the battles of the past have been won. Therefore, there is no place for the type of agitation that Dr. King was noted for bringing to bear on the issues of his day. SCLC’s continued presence is an indication that things are not as good as community and political leaders spin them to be.
“It hurts,” Steele said from Washington several hours after Georgia Governor Nathan Deal unveiled the statue which depicts Dr. King in full stride with his head looking toward the horizon.
“But you have to keep moving on,” Steele added.
Of the five speakers who spoke during the program, three of them were Black. The first to speak was Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. Reed was not born when King organized SCLC.
Then State Representative Calvin Smyre spoke of the many people in state government who should be credited with manifesting the King statute. He was a student at Fort Valley State College when Dr. King was assassinated.
Smyre was followed by King’s daughter, Bernice King. She came close to recognizing SCLC when after a beautiful speech about the high moral standard set by Dr. King, she asked all the people that had worked with him to stand. Ambassador Andrew Young, Rev. Gerald Durley and a few other SCLC members stood.
“They trying to say that SCLC is dead, that we are not relevant anymore” Steele told delegates to the 68th SCLC Convention in Memphis last month.
“But I’m here to tell you they are wrong. If I worried about people trying to kill SCLC I could not get up in the morning and do this job,” Steele said.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com