How we as a black couple broke through the glass ceiling of prejudice by stepping out on the glass floor.

On June 14, 2007, I had an opportunity to interview Dr. William G. Anderson, D.O., at his home to discuss the individual that had the most influence on him. Dr. Anderson identified his wife, Norma, as that individual. Mrs. Anderson was instrumental in the historic Albany Movement, the first major civil rights movement in the United State that was both spontaneous and nonviolent. Dr. and Mrs. Anderson were at the front of demonstrations, and suffered both numerous incarcerations for civil disobedience and threats of imminent violence. They both took the first step on the moving walkway - a journey to freedom and justice for a generation of Blacks. As you’ll see from the dialogue, Dr. Anderson spoke on other events and stories that happened in his life.

Transcription of Lenora Hayes’ interview held with Dr. William G. Anderson, D.O. June 14, 2007 All photos black and white photos are taken from the book, Autobiographies of a Black Couple.

Lenora Hayes: Tell me about how you met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and your involvement with the Albany Civil Rights Movement Walk.

Dr. Anderson: I first met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before he was a world renowned leader, civil rights leader. He was just a college student. I met him when he had just finished high school and again at Morehouse. I was one year ahead of him in school and although I had been in the Navy for a couple of years - but mind you I went through an accelerated program in high school , but put me a couple of years ahead of him and one year older than he. He was just a college student. He was aspiring to be a preacher as was his father, grandfather and uncle. My wife’s brother was also an aspiring minister and the two of them (Martin Luther King and my brother-in-law) were the best of friends. That’s how I met Dr. King, at my mother-in-law’s house in Atlanta, these two college freshmen students practicing their preaching. I would tell them to “shut up,” not realizing that I was telling a world leader to shut up. But not withstanding the irritation that I felt over the time as they were practicing their preaching, we maintained a friendship that endured. We maintained contact throughout the rest of his years in college, graduate and seminary schools. We would touch base when he was in Atlanta because he would visit my mother-in-law and I would visit his home.

After completion of Mortuary Science School, I was offered a job as a mortician in Montgomery, Alabama. This was offer I couldn’t refuse, as I was told that I could set my own hours and continue my education that was to go on to Medical School. I was offered $15 a week, which was significant to me. That was an offer I could not turn down! So, we left Atlanta with one child and went to Montgomery to work at the funeral home and finish my education at Alabama State College for Negroes. That’s what it was called in those days! So while we were there, one of my crew mates was Ralph David Abernathy. Again, just a college student! He had a little coup automobile. I had a motor scooter, as I could not afford an automobile. He used to enjoy riding my motor scooter, and I would use his car for driving my wife and daughter around to go grocery shopping and the like. So we hit it off very well. Besides that, Norma [Dr. Anderson’s wife] was an excellent cook and Ralph Aberrantly loved to eat! Frequently, he would eat my dinner at my apartment in the projects. I would get home from work and Norma would have to fix more dinner for me because Ralph had eaten it all up. But he became a part of the family. He was so close to us that he became the Godfather of our oldest daughter. Abernathy didn’t know anything about King and King knew nothing about Abernathy. It was later years that two of them got together.

For us to know both of them in totally different settings and ultimately for us to be brought together because of the Civil Rights Movement in a third location, in Albany, Georgia, was fortuitous. We could not have planned it or anticipated it. It was coincidental while in Montgomery, we joined Dexter Ave. Baptist Church. There were two things that were unique about Dexter - 1) The pastor at the time was Rev. Vernon Johns - one of the foremost black preachers in the nation - one of the most brilliant scholars and a civil rights advocate - even before the term civil rights had been coined. He was in the forefront of the Civil Rights. That was the church that we chose to join. 2.) That is the same church after we left Montgomery and Martin Luther King had finished his training at Boston University and the Theological Seminary. He was called to pastor at Dexter in Montgomery. What a series of coincidence that one could never have predicted or planned. This was certainly not in our plan! So, we had that in common, my brother in- law, best friend, both aspiring preachers, Abernathy - Godfather of my daughter, we all wind up at the same church, same city at different times -could not have been predicted. But when we wound up going up to Albany to practice, and the Civil Rights Movement started, we had encouraged and I say encouraged - yes we did - my wife and I encourage several hundred of people to follow us off to jail. Having that many people in jail several hundred, with as many as 1,200 at one time, and having no idea how to get them out of jail. We didn’t have any money and[or] one black lawyer in the entire South outside of Atlanta, and we had no idea how long we would stay in jail or what type of treatment we would receive in jail. That’s when we remembered that we had a couple of friends that we met several years ago - Martin Luther King and Ralph David Abernathy. They had now been leaders in a successful bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, where we came from years earlier and now we were able to call on them as friends, not as strangers but friends. They both came to Albany at our urging. I say our urging, as they were reluctant to come because we did not have any organization. We were spontaneous. In fact, history will record that the Albany Movement was the “First Spontaneous Mass Movement in the Civil Rights Movement Ever”! The First! We had no organization; the organization was formed after the movement started, not before. Most of the others, there was an organization first. No, we had started a demonstration, had hundreds of people in and realized we needed to get organized. That’s when we called Martin and Ralph and they came and join us.

If you read Andy Young’s books, he reported that I tricked Martin Luther King into committing to Albany, and I plead guilty because in the midst of the Civil Rights Rally, he had spoken to four churches full of people that one night. At the last church before the benediction, I said that Dr. King is here and he’s going to be with us until the end of this movement! I had said that and had not discussed with him at all. But he did not get up and say “No, No, No, I didn’t say that! But he did not come to Albany with the intention of staying; he came there to give a speech. I do believe that the crowd kind of picked him in a cloud and carried him to a higher plane. They were his motivation, they were his spirit! The spirit of Albany was infectious at the time and if they had never been a group of people that were ready to confront this segregation system with segregation and discrimination - it was the people of Albany. So he came back, and over the next two years, we had very many many demonstrations, many many mass meetings, many many agonizing days and nights, the Ku Klux Klan would have its rallies one-half block away from my house.

On one of the occasions when King, Abernathy and I were all in jail, and it just happened to be on a Friday. That Saturday, Martin had [previously] agreed to be on Meet the Press that following Sunday, [however] he had vowed that when he went to jail, he would not come out of jail until there had been the establishment of this biracial commission to study the segregation and discrimination in Albany. Lawrence Spebach was one of those who called regularly to the Chief of Police all day Saturday to say, “Dr. King has got to come out of jail, as he is supposed to be on Meet the Press tomorrow,” and Dr. King said “No - I will not come out!” After repeated calls and the Chief of Police himself would plead for him to come out, Martin had a conference with the three of us, as we were in the same jail cell - Anderson, Abernathy and King. Martin said that being on Meet the Press is too important for us to pass the opportunity to get our message out to the People of the Nation. This was one of the most widely watched and listened to programs on the air. So, we in the jail cell - would you believe, pulled straws! The one who pulled the short straw was the one who had to come out of jail to go on Meet the Press. I pulled the short straw! I was stunned! So, I immediately got out of jail. Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Staff got me an airplane reservation and got me to New York that Saturday night. His staff briefed me on what they thought the questions would be, they were a bit off! There were a couple of segregationist on the panel and that’s evident by the questions that they asked. I went on Meet the Press with the little preparation I had the night before replacing Martin Luther King, of all people - one of the greatest minds of our day. I was humbled to be in that position! There’s a record of how that I responded.

As I look back over those years, our struggle to get through school, medical school, the big decision to go back to Georgia , and my medical practice, I cannot say that we have any regret because even though there was some difficult days as Dr. Martin Luther King said in his last speech on earth, “There’ll be some dark days ahead, but I’ve been to the mountain top and seen the promised land.” I was happy that we were able to see that promised land with him, Rev. Abernathy, and so many leaders in the Civil Rights Movement that gave up so much of their time, life, energy, and efforts. We are just so happy to be part of that history.

Appendix – Additional Transcribed Conversation

1. I had attempted to join the Army two times once at fifteen and again at sixteen. I was turned down because of my age, and my mother didn’t want me to serve. After two years of college and now seventeen, I volunteered. I felt that even though I had been living in a society of racism in Americas, Georgia, the Japanese had attached home. I volunteered as I wanted to go and defend my home. It was fortuitous.

I went into the Navy because I really did not want to go into the Army as I’d seen some of the recruitment materials for bombing personnel and they were called blood soldiers. They were crawling on their bellies with guns over their heads. I didn't want that! I think I wanted to do something different within the military, and the Navy was the other option. I had in the interim tried to get into the Air Force. I was turned down, and their lost. I was also turned down by Tuskegee Air Force, but anyway I did get in the Navy and I was offered the option of getting into the seaman’s branch or the steward branch. I told the recruitment office I didn’t know the difference and he told me the steward branch was the cooks, the butlers - they clean up the captain’s quarters! I stopped him and told him, I didn’t care if the other shoveled horse manure - and I believe I said it like that. I told him I would take it, “I will not be anyone’s servant!” He laughed a bit, but he let me make the choice of joining the seaman’s branch.

I went to Great Lakes Training Center. It was interesting that my company, which I didn’t realize that until sometime later, that my company was hand picked to integrate the Navy! Never before in the history of the Navy had there been any integration! A lot of people don’t realize that today but I went into an all black company. My company was hand picked; we learned later that everyone in my company had at least a High School Education. That was remarkable. All of us, not sure as to how many, 100 or 125, but every one of us had at least a high school education. We discovered, “Wow, we are a test company!” They were preparing us for integration and we were the first all black company to integrate a battalion! So, we determined, among ourselves, that we were going to beat them at everything - in drill, decorum, or whatever exercise, we would beat them at everything and we did! We were an outstanding company!

After we finished our basic training, we had a couple of weeks off. We called it Boot Leave. I went home to Americas and got sick. Again, fortuitous! The doctor that was taking care of me said that I needed to stay an extra week to get well and he contacted the Navy. They granted me an additional week of leave. When I returned from boot leave all of my company had been shipped to the Seabees. The Seabees was the construction battalion. They were the ones who plowed through the jungle who built the bridges, roads, and slop around in the mud and the trees - fighting python snakes and other poisonous creatures. I was so happy that I was able to miss the Seabees. So when I returned to the Great Lakes, I was put on independent duty - again I would have never predicted or planned that. Independent duty meant that I was not assigned to a company. I was put on a ship that was sent to the Hawaiian Islands, and then to the Philippine Islands where I had a chance to work as a medic. It was at this time that I realized what I wanted to do for the rest of my life!

2. There were others that influenced my life - my parents! I was fortunate to have a loving mother and a father. Unfortunately, many of the children in the current generation cannot say that they have a mother and a father. My mother was the disciplinarian and my father was sort of the stabilizing force in the household. Both of them inspired their three children. They literally insisted upon us getting a college education. Why did I say college education? That’s not anything so out of the ordinary? Oh, yes it was! There were few Blacks in Americas, Georgia that went to College - a few. My mother started teaching High School or started teaching Elementary School with a High School Education. That’s how limited the educational opportunities were for Blacks in Americas, Georgia. If you finished High School, you were eligible to become a teacher. There few, few blacks that ever went ever to college. My mother did go to college later in life. Motivation from my parents started early in my life - they insisted that that there children went to college. I recall at one time that I wanted to drop out of college as I didn’t think it was for me. One of my Sociology Professors who had taken an interest in me asked me a question when I spoke to him about dropping out. He said, “If you drop out of school now, what can you do that million of others cannot do?” Now that doesn’t sound like a big statement but that was enough for me, as I did not want to be just anybody - just another person. But it was he that said, “If you drop out now - you’ll be just like anybody else.” That gave me significant motivation to stay.

3. There are several people that have had a tremendous impact on my life and have influenced most of the decisions that I have made. I cannot say that there is a single significant event that came by as a result of my own initiative, motivation, inspiration or aspiration. Most of the events were always influenced directly or indirectly by others. I guess that the one person that has had an impact on my life has been my wife, Norma. Had I not married her or if she had not chosen me to be her husband, I would not have met Martin Luther King Jr., I would not have gone to Atlanta where I got exposed to a career in radio that was short lived yet very valuable. It was unlikely that I would have elected to go to Mortuary Science School in Atlanta, and thereafter living in Montgomery, Alabama to practice Mortuary Science, and meet Rev. Ralph Aberrantly! So she was instrumental in the decisions that were made relative to those events. Had she not shared a vision that I had of becoming a physician, I doubt that I would have been able to get into Medical School. After getting into medical school, without her support, I would not have been able to survive the rigors of such a curriculum with a wife and three children. After finishing an internship and having a desire to move to the North (Flint Michigan), I saw racism in a different light for the first time - and that’s not having to face racism on a daily basis.

5. It was my wife who reminded me of a commitment that I had made years earlier - that if I ever got my education, I would return to Georgia. Had she not insisted on me to return to Georgia, I would not have become intimately involved with the Civil Rights activity. It’s something that I’m most proud of and I’d say that she is most proud of - the fact that we were able to contribute to the most significant event in the history of Black people in America. The Civil Rights Movement was the most significant event in the lives of Blacks in America. Now this is not say that the Emancipation of Proclamation that legally freed slaves was not a significant event. After all, that initiative was by a white man, Abraham Lincoln, among others of course. The Civil Rights Movement, the initiative there was lead by Black People - lead by the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King and Dr. Ralph Abernathy. So it was rather a unique experience to be part of that.