Tales from the attic: How one guy became an activist

Fifty seven years ago, I was editing an early version of what would become known as the underground press. But I was a writer, not an activist, until something happened. . . 

(Incidentally, this 1966 article used the term “Negro” which was standard for the time. The term "black" became dominant a few years later.)

Sam Smith, The Idler, 1966 – Monday January 24^th was the day that Washington thumbed it nose at 0. Roy Chalk. There is a long list of grievances against Mr. Chalk a Washingtonian could compile, but it is enough here to mention that Mr.  Chalk is head of the D. C. Transit System and that Mr. Chalk, on the day in question, was in the midst of petitioning the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Commission for a fare increase from twenty-five cents to thirty cents. On the morning of the 24th, about 7 a.m., my alarm went off, but I didn’t hear it.  About twenty minutes to eight I awoke and remembered the promise I had made to myself to take part in the bus boycott that day. I don’t like demonstrating, probably for the same reason I don’t like ringing door-bells during a campaign, being on committees, or attending civic meetings. The theory of democracy. I concluded long ago, is fine: the practice of it is often a pain in the neck.

Still, thirty cents is a lot of money to pay for a bus ride. It’s more than most public transit riders in the country pay. So I hauled myself out of bed, swallowed a cup of coffee, warmed up my ’54 Chrysler, and made my way to 6th and H Sts. NE, one of the assembly points established for volunteer drivers providing free car rides during the boycott. There a boycott organizer filled my car with three high school girls and a middle aged and rather fat lady. A bus drove by and it was empty. “They’re all empty,” the lady said. It was the first bus I had seen that morning and I wondered whether she was right. As we drove west along H. St., I asked one of the students, “Has there been a lot of talk about the boycott at your school?”

“Oh yeah, we’ve been hearing about it on us teenager’s favorite radio station.” “WOL?” “Yeah man, soul radio.” The radio stations, particularly the Negro ones, were playing up the boycott. This was important since the daily papers had not been overly generous with their coverage. If both the fat lady and her husband worked, the five cent proposed fare increase would cost them twenty cents a day. That’s the price of a loaf of bread. Over the course of the year it would probably cost them as much as they spent in groceries during a month. Nickels add up. I let off my passengers and headed back to 6th & H.

The boycott had been organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, with the help of numerous civic action organizations.  SNCC and the other groups charged that the fare hike was discriminatory since it would largely hurt Negro Washington.

Washington is a city of considerable apathy in local matters. It has been so long denied home rule that it tends not to believe that the voice of the people matters. It often accepts its fate with a passivity that would surprise more politically conscious communities. When demonstrations and protests are organized, the police are likely to outnumber the demonstrators. Against this background, SNCC’s plan seemed audacious. It was hard enough to get 100 Washingtonians organized. SNCC was trying to mobilize tens of thousands. SNCC proposed that people walk, hitch a ride, or stay home on the davy of the boycott. High school students were urged to organize walk-ins. Cars and volunteer drivers were sought. to pick up riders along the boycotted bus lines. Domestics were asked to tell their employers that they would have to be picked up. SNCC set up a communications headquarters, procured radio equipped cars, and established car assembly points. Handbills were widely distributed, stuck under doors and beneath the windshield wipers of parked cars. The police stationed additional men along the boycott routes.

“It’s beautiful,” the man in the lightly frayed brown overcoat said after he told me he was headed for 17th St. NW. “It’s working and it’s beautiful. Hey, you see those two there? Let’s try and get them.” I pulled over to the right lane by a stop where two men stood. “Hey man, why spend thirty cents? Get in,” my rider called to the pair. “You headed down town?” “Yeah, get in.” “Great. It’s working, huh? Great!”

The boycott was like an informal game of touch football on a Saturday afternoon. Nobody was too good at the game but everyone who played seemed to enjoy it just the same. Not everyone played. As I made my way back from downtown, I stopped at several bus stops. “Fight the fare increase: ride for free,” I’d call out. Most of those waiting for the bus were white. Some pretended they didn’t hear me and looked the other way.  Others stared as if I were a little crazy. Still others shook their head in that nervous, embarrassed way people do when they’re refusing to buy pencils from a crippled man on the street corner.

During the day I carried 71 people. Only five of them were white. Three American University students. One man on his way to a job interview in a crummy section of town. And one lady who thought the boycott wasn’t going far enough. I wondered about those who rejected my offer of a free ride. Perhaps they wanted a thirty cent fare. But I doubted that. It was more likely they were apprehensive about anything that upset the routine of life. They were more prosperous than the riders I picked up on Benning Rd.; more successful than the cement-caked laborer who got in on Florida Avenue; and had more reason to be satisfied with life than the Negro maid I carried who commuted regularly halfway across town to a badly paid job.

But when someone offered them a free ride they were afraid: Better not, he might rape me. What’s the gimmick? Must be one of those agitators; hitching rides is dangerous. It’s too bad people get scared when they start to succeed. At the delicatessen at 24th and Benning, one of the assembly points, a young, wavy-haired Negro who worked with SNCC greeted me. “Been waiting all morning for a car to work from here; said they were going to have one, but they didn’t send it.” We got into my car and continued east out to Benning. Lots of empty buses. “We’ve got to live together, man. You’re white and you can’t help it. I’m Negro and I can’t help it. But we still can get along. That’s the way I feel about it.” I agreed.

“You ever worked with SNCC before?” “Nope.” “Well, I’ll tell you, man, you hear a lot of things. But they’re a good group. They stick together. You know like if you get in trouble you know they’re going to be in there with you. If you get threatened they’ll have people around you all the time. They stick together. That’s good, man.”

People were sticking together well that Monday. SNCC estimated D. C. Transit lost 130,000 to 150,000 fares during the boycott. Only occasionally did the enthusiasm for the boycott threaten to get out of hand.  One lady said she had heard that kids at her boy’s school were going to wait at the bus stops and beat up any of their schoolmates who got off D.C. Transit vehicles. But there were no reports of this actually happening. More probably, it was just talk.  Like the lady in my car who asked a man we had picked up at a downtown bus stop, “You weren’t waiting for a bus, were you?” “No, I just figured someone would come along and pick me up.” “That’s good.  ’Cause if you were waiting for a bus I was going to bop you over the head.” We all laughed and the man reassured her again.

None of us knew whether the boycott would have any effect on the fare increase. Two days later, how ever, the transit commission, in a unanimous decision, denied D. C. Transit the hike. The commission’s executive director drily told reporters that the boycott played no part in the decision. He was probably right. The commission worried about such things as cash dividends, investor’s equity, rate of return, depreciated value, company rate base. The boycotters worried about a nickel more a ride. Fortunately, it all came out the same. But in case it hadn’t, the boycott organizers were preparing to renew the protest. It would have been interesting.

After the bus boycott, I wrote a letter to its leader congratulating him and offering to help in the future. Not long after the leader, Marion S. Barry, and his colleague, L. D. Pratt, were sitting in my apartment talking about how I could help in SNCC’s public relations. I readily agreed, became Marion’s PR guy and, for the first time, joined a movement.