Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Toilet Paper Scrap Chronicles Civil Rights Ordeal

TOILET PAPER LETTER
09/06/05
BBULL
LENGTH 6:58 + :26 music tail = 7:24

***NOTE HOST OUTRO AT END***

Host:

Simply put, toilet paper is not considered much of a keepsake. Yet within the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, rests a carefully-preserved six-foot swathe of toilet paper. Its relevance in chronicling the civil rights struggle can best be told by Miriam Real, who used it as stationery while incarcerated in a Port Allen, Louisiana Jail, in September 1963.

Real -- then Miriam Feingold -- was one of hundreds of people arrested during a voter registration drive coordinated by the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE. In today's feature, Real describes her fateful assignment.

Listeners should note that this story contains some recreated audio elements -- and some descriptions of violence:

==========================

"Plaquemine was one of the few areas where there had actually had been blacks voting. And we had come in to that area to register voters, and people were just so enormously grateful. They never in a million years thought that the civil rights movement would reach them. They may have been living in primitive conditions, but they all had televisions, so they saw all the things on TV.

[CLIP OF "OPEN MIND" SHOW WITH JAMES FARMER]

JamesFarmer02: "I pity the segregationist. I think that he is as much a victim of the historical forces about which we've been talking, as the Negro has. We are trying to free him as we gain freedom for ourselves

[FADE UNDER NEXT TRAK, REVIVE]

"James Farmer was an incredible orator. What he said was absolutely what we all agreed with.

JamesFarmer01: "We're not going to stop until the bigots of the South and the North no longer challenge a mans' right to live simply because he is asking for the rights which the Constitution says are his."

"CORE felt it would be a very good motivational thing to have James Farmer come down, to help galvanize the local community. There had been a series of protest marches that were broken up by the local law enforcement people. And the situation had, by late August of that summer, escalated to the point where the town officials had gotten the cooperation of a local federal judge…..E. Gordon West had actually issued a number of restraining orders against the marchers.

[FADE UP "WE SHALL OVERCOME" SONG, HOLD FOR A FEW BEATS]

"So one night, we had a big rally. There was a lot of singing and James Farmer gave a very strong, motivational speech. And then we took off marching downtown…. And were met by a massive wall of resistance from the white community. And a lot of the law enforcement people were on horseback, they had cattle prods, they had high pressure hoses with them, and they drove the marchers back into the black community.

[FADE UP HOSES, SCREAMS, SHOUTS]

"And we all took refuge in the church, figuring that we would be safe there. And they broke through the windows of the church, they lobbed tear gas grenades into the church, turned high pressure hoses on, in through the windows, thereby forcing everybody to flee.

"And at first, Mr. Farmer thought that he would in fact turn himself in, that that might quiet things down. And he was advised by the local black leaders that he would be in fact, giving his life away. At that point, one of the leaders in the black community had a funeral parlor. And he hid him in the back of a hearse…..so they were able to get Farmer out of town.

"Meanwhile…..the sheriff’s deputies and all the law enforcement people and all the vigilantes were busily trying to round up the rest of us….I don’t know how many hundreds of us they arrested, but they needed four different kinds of jail cells. For the whites and the blacks, because of course, we were to be segregated into jails, and they needed cells for the men and the women. And none of the communities around there were all that large. I happened to be shipped off to the Port Allen jail. Port Allen is a suburb of New Orleans and is probably at this moment, underwater. I was actually the only white woman who was arrested, who at least ended up in Port Allen. And so I was in cell all by myself.

"It was maybe eight feet by eight feet, with a steel bunk bed with a thin mattress on it...and there were toilet facilities in the cell. And the only paper available was the toilet paper, so I wrote a long-letter description of what had happened, on toilet paper……..

[HEATHER STUR READING: "Dear Danny, this is the finest of prison stationery, nothing but the best for you……"]

"Danny Mitchell was another CORE person. He was black, and we had just become very good friends. And I don’t remember now why I addressed the letter to Danny, except that he’d probably told me just before he had left, "Please keep me posted on what happens….."

[HEATHER STUR READING: ………"...bands of vigilantes roamed through the neighborhood breaking into homes, overturning furniture and dragging out everyone with a black face..."

"I wanted to get the facts down, I mean, it was just so horrendous…..

[HEATHER STUR READING: "If they had a prodder they used them to hurry the process. They pulled down one girl's pants and prodded her between her legs! They prodded an 8 month pregnant lady until she dropped from pain………"

[FADE OUT REST OF READING]

"This was information that we would need for a variety of reasons. Not least because we'd hoped federal authorities would move in and investigate.

"But the only way I was going to get the toilet paper letter out was to somehow hide it. And I knew that the possibility existed, that I would be thoroughly body-searched and patted down on the way out.

"I mean, I don’t know if they would’ve tried to read it, but if they had read it and understood what it was about, they would've flushed it down the toilet immediately! (laughs)

"As luck would have it, I had been wearing a dress that had a very full skirt and a fairly deep hem……and with many apologies to my mother, I- I...ripped the stitches and slipped the toilet paper letter into the hem. And it was never found.

"I don’t think I ever sent it to Danny. I was very happy, that the state historical society got it...and they have preserved it very carefully. And that is a piece of history that we should all be extremely proud. Not just those of us who were CORE workers, we were maybe catalysts. The true heroes of the story were the people who, who lived there. I mean they didn't vote, they had absolutely no involvement in public affairs. And the voter registration movement and the civil rights movement....they brought themselves into the 20th century, and became a part of America.

"And some of them lost their farms, some of them lost jobs, some of them were beaten up, arrested...and it's one of the....maybe the few times in recent memory where it so clearly...showed that when people got together and protested an injustice, that the injustice could be undone".

[At 6:58, FADE UP QUICK CLIP OF "WOKE UP THIS MORNING WITH MY MIND ON FREEDOM....FADE OUT, ENDS AT 7:24]

***HOST OUTRO**(READ OVER MUSIC TAIL OR AFTER)

OUTRO:

Miriam Real, discussing her toilet-paper letter which is preserved at the Wisconsin Historical Society of Madison. The document chronicles a 1963 clash between civil rights activists and police in the town of Plaquemine [PLAHK-uh-muhn], Louisiana. This story was produced by Brian Bull.]

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