Charles Everett and Delores Boyd

Recorded November 19, 2013 Archived November 19, 2013 39:19 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: atd001028

Description

Retired Judge, Delores Boyd (63) interviews her childhood friend and church member, Charles Everett (63) about their memories of their church, Mt. Zion AME in Montgomery, Alabama and how the guidance and support from the members, leaders and community helped to shape their lives and the lives and those from the Civil Rights generation. They focus on the legacy and future of the Mt. Zion community.

Subject Log / Time Code

Mt. Zion AME Church will soon be renovated into a museum
Mary Thornton reminds Delores of the children she grew up with in the Mt. Zion community
The old Mt. Zion looked for talent in their children to nurture
Charles wanted to sing with the youth choir but he was too young so he joined the St. Jude choir and became an altar boy
Disciplined was instilled by Miss Shultz
Charles and Delores recount the influence of Wilie Mae Stone
Charles recounts the seeing the body of Jermiah Reed
Charles was taught not to look at white people in the face
The old Mt. Zion community is destroyed
On December 5, 1955 Rev. Roy L. Bennett organizes the first bus boycott meeting at Mt. Zion
Charles wants the old Mt. Zion to become a community meeting place and a museum

Participants

  • Charles Everett
  • Delores Boyd

Recording Locations

Rosa Parks Museum

Venue / Recording Kit

Partnership Type

Outreach

Initiatives


Transcript

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00:04 Today is November 19th. 2013. I am Delores Boyd proud to be 63 years old and here today at the Rosa Parks Museum and Montgomery eye with a someone. I have known since I was 7 years old, so we are friends. I've had the pleasure of being his lawyer and we have had the pleasure of serving together is trustees in our church. His name is CP Everett.

00:35 My name is Charles Patterson Everett the 4th. I am 66 years old. Today's date is November 19th, 1913 Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. My relationship to the interviewer is friend colleague.

01:06 And member of the Mount Zion seta Foundation Incorporated.

01:15 And we are here today CP also known as Charles Patterson to talk about the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which is the Church of our childhood and remains our church. What I want to talk about is that old Mount Zion, which was located in West Montgomery at the corner of South Holt and Stone Street. The physical structure is still there and thanks to UCP for the past several years that physical structure has been undergoing renovation, which is going to transform that building into a vibrant Museum all the we've moved on since 1989 to Wish Upon a new facility. Just this past Sunday CP in church. I know you were there. I had an experience that triggered this desire for me to talk.

02:15 About that old Mount Zion you remember that The Soloist for the day was Mary Thornton 15. I remember when she was born if you do too she grew up there.

02:32 In the old Mount Zion

02:37 She was a soloist and I listened as did the congregation as she sang with so much passion so much fervor, and I could not help but think back to when you and I grew up in the old Mount Zion and how that church.

02:59 Seem to produce so many natural musicians you of course, but there were lots of women who sounded like Mahalia Jackson Who sounded like Marian Anderson, you sounded to me like Paul Robeson. It dawned on me that what our church did then we've been fortunate to continue doing for so many years and that is to bring out the gifts and children. Did you get that feeling Sunday? What what meaning did it have for you?

03:33 I saw a bridge that still exist with young people who have a desire and a need to express themselves in a multi.

03:50 Talented environment

03:53 I think that I for Hap's had more people who were interested in promoting.

04:05 The Negro folk song

04:09 Continuing to hold on to the classics to the anthems.

04:15 And not be completely inundated by those kinds of those genre of music that may tend to be more toward gospel and

04:30 Contemporary spiritual you're saying that you have that at the old Mount Zion in the 1950s a by profession mailman Postman, but who had a deep desire to to sing praises to the Lord in and was trained at Alabama State College. Then didn't know that he was trained musically. I knew that he had a beautiful voice singing in the choir back at that time and was very devoted to to the Beer best in music that we had available to us in our community.

05:18 And then we had others whom I could emulate I shall never forget. Mrs. Ethel Nelson and that beautiful soprano voice singing turns Center and and and and trying to go back and emulate the sound that John Sawyer made when at a wedding he would sing because I promised me and some of the other Classics so I had someone to emulate not only that I had someone to call and evaluate any time that I sing solo at Mount Zion, I could count on John saw you calling that evening to offer his his evaluation his support and encouragement.

06:10 That was a role that Mount Zion and so many of the black churches during the fifties and sixties naturally play. Don't you think if they did that wasn't as if they were just looking for musicians to me. What they were looking for is whatever Talent we have is as you may remember I could not see but I was in the kitty choir. I think I think our parents just decided that if you came to mount Tire you were going to say that. Here's the problem many people might not know this, but when Reverend Ben it was Pastor in from 1952 until 1956.

07:04 I must have been eight nine years old at the time.

07:12 And I wanted to sing with the youth with the teenager's but they did not want me to sing in that choir. I was too young and the teenager's did not want me to be involved. But I love to sing. I thought that I had something to offer. So Reverend Bennett in one of his sermons indicated once ended it little CP wants to be in the choir with you, but he is too young at this time. But the CP I want you to continue to work one of these days you will be able to be in the youth choir.

07:54 I want to sing. So I thought about the school where I was attending at the time, which was Saint Jude.

08:04 St. Jude allowed me to sing in there you even though you probably 10 or 11 at the most time and I in a in a way I drifted away from Mount Zion and became very involved not as a practicing Catholic but as an AME Zion who was a student at St. Jude I became an altar boy. Learn how to recite my prayers in Latin. I became very involved in the music program and sister Grace took me under her wings and guided me.

08:44 And I continue to go to Mount Zion on Sundays, but I did I wasn't involved in the music program until I was delivering newspapers one day and my cousin Olivia Anderson when she was Olivia Lewis, then said CP you need to come back to Mount Zion. We've got this new Minister and his wife and I hit her name is May.

09:10 So I decided to to follow Olivia's recommendation and I must have been at that time 13 or 14 years of age.

09:22 And I walked into the sanctuary and I saw Miss shoots and her hurt her choir singing. I heard them and I saw all these pretty girl and I said I want to be a part of that are like the way they was sounding I like the way they were singing and I like those pretty good at the year. I came to Mount Zion say unlike you I think your parents your grandparents your wife and her parents. Oh came out of Mountainside. I don't know if you remember I really was born in South Montgomery down and Raymer. My father's sister was Olivia boy who may have talked to you in Sunday school at Mount Zion. I came to live with my aunt Olivia to go to school in Montgomery. I was 7 and naturally she

10:22 Lived and breathed Mount Zion. So I became a member Mount Zion and you mention mrs. Shoes. I didn't know where in Bennett because I was not there but Reverend shoots did follow him and when you came back mrs. Shoes was over the kitty choir and one of my earliest memories o

10:45 Is of

10:47 Being disciplined

10:50 At Mount Zion what what what I remember about those early years was that it was almost like a little laboratory like a little school itself. Mrs. Shoes was no-nonsense. My understanding is she didn't have any musical training. Did she say she had a gift and she knew how to bring out everybody's Talent. Of course. I didn't have any to bring out. What I remember is that I was putting the alto section and whenever we sing a song she invariably with gold near the Altos and I would be off key point when that little girl Mary saying Sunday.

11:36 It was as if I were transformed back to that time and I had a longing for it. And in a sense. I said my goodness we've gone backwards as erase our churches back in the day found ways to be stages for us to give us the microphone now. I knew I couldn't see but I knew that I had a gift that really need to talk and you know who I credit with that Miss really nice though. And I knew you would say that I studied Stones passed and I often wondered how she was able to

12:17 Speak so distinctly and distinguished LED NFL in her deliberate and I found out that at Alabama State Teachers College. They offered a required class called elocution and I said to myself it seems that anyone who is who has a theater program or who has anything will communication is required teachers Etc. What almost be required to take elocution, but that was her background in addition to having experienced mrs. White who who was the teacher that Miss White's white school back to school that Rosa Parks went to early on and that is also the school that her friend mrs. Car jelly car and four

13:17 Little training school for black kids back in the day, but it was pretty much the the school for public if it was a school for those who are not necessarily preparing to go to the normal school, which is Alabama state was Alabama State and mrs. Stone was interested in following a track where she could go to mrs. White's program and then the very next crashing with the state normal school. So that was kind of a but if you notice there was a white teacher involved in her training.

14:04 And I think back on me white as in not black or Miss, right? Okay, what happened? You had those people who were congregationalists who had come to the South as part of the Reconstruction. And they develop School Miss Thorne down in Calhoun and all those who came to the South to educate black people freed slaves. I remembered that. They were involved even in the normal school. Somehow I'd forgotten that. They also were involved with Miss white school. That's right. Some of the things that help to soften the Jim Crow experience.

14:58 For those of us who were children coming through rough times in the forties and fifties, I think about my church where that was a laboratory of pastors who like rubbing say in Reverend Bennett would not afraid to stand up to Injustice and enter lead in times when leading against segregation was not popular, but then to go to school and to participate in another church where at and I don't know many people realize this but during time of deep racial segregation.

15:41 St. Jude was an integrated school as far as the instructors concerned The Nuns with white some of those teachers who came from Brown other New England colleges to to to teach us with white I think about Joan Thiele Mary Jo kopechne who's known because of of of the Kennedy experience of those were teachers here at st. Jude so during time of a time of social injustice. We were daily having interaction with white teachers and we were in a sense of livius to the emotional trauma of Jim Crow. I don't know if you believe this as I do my upbringing and yours except for St. Jude was in an old black.

16:41 Community Church was all black my school through junior high was all black but there was stability there. We sold leader you so leaders black and white at St. Jude we went to church and there were leaders everywhere. We talked about misto. No, I did not know that elocution was a course that she took but what I remember about her and why to this day when I think about our old Mount Zion, I think first about her because she had this dignity about her she spoke passionately, but with an articulation that I just sat there in amazement and to be honest, I felt affirmed because I could not see I knew that I talked in a manner that was different from a lot of the other kids.

17:41 But she made it. Alright you remember how we always after Sunday school? Somebody was called upon to stay in and give the lessons of goal or what nuggets and whatever we learned in Sunday school and she always ended

17:59 With this theme be your best self. You know, what is funny that you should remember that as well, but I went away after high school to college and you did too because you were the ski good, but you were a little closer to home. I went out to Oklahoma at first and then came back to Tuscaloosa and then went back to law school in Virginia. But what I remember is every time a kid came home during Thanksgiving Christmas break, whatever break she have a stand. That's so glad to see you tell us what you been doing. And at the end she say now Mount Zion loves you and let me tell you what we want you to do. We want you to be your best self that stuck with me. I've had made presentations focus on being your best self.

18:59 Influence by that to that wasn't there was a type of expectation that they had of us that cause us to to stretch and and and to be just better than that then then we could have been but then every now and then Jim Crow with jump back out to pull us back into reality, even though we had the church the school the family to provide that softening of Jim Crow.

19:33 I can remember walking home from Mount Zion after a choir rehearsal. How old do you think you were at that time? I was probably this was before I left and this had to have been just after Reverend Bennett.

20:04 And during the time Reverend Clement came to probably between 1955 and 57, right Reverend shoots is the first Pastor. So you were there during the time of Reverend Bennett School, but I also involve myself and what was happening in the school where I was a student continuing tell us about this first I assumed this was your first confrontation with Jim Crow in a real war said this was my first time seeing what could happen if you didn't stay on your side of the road and and I was walking home from church with some of my friends from practice a problem getting ready for one of those Miss Stone type of programs where we also sang and decided

21:00 Speeches etcetera poems

21:03 There was a young person by the name of Jeremiah Reed and Jeremiah Reed had been a have been found guilty of having been involved and raping a white woman and mr. Howard who JC Howard who is also a member of our church Almon Funeral Home across the street from the church and as we were walking from Mount Zion and course, I lived on glass street right off Hold Street and the path was right by muster funeral how and how to

21:42 Jeremiah Reid's body had been brought to mr. Howard to be prepared for burial.

21:52 And looking at a person who had been electrocuted was a horrible experience for less and his body was brought in this to have after electrocution and in the friends who would come from church with me and ask do it over his casket look down and him to see how the skin it was almost as though bubbles had formed all over his face where those little you think of serious acne, but these were

22:30 Quickest skin had actually burned and in to look at that at the end that coffin snapped us back into the reality of what my grandmother said amounts it taught me as long as we were in our neighborhood and in our neighborhood was self-sufficient.

22:51 If you wanted the cobbler to fix your shoes, that was hopeless Shoe Shop. That was LD. She's right on West Jeff Davis Dr. That was dr. Dungy. You needed a dentist. That was dr. Smiley. Mr. Neal Conger Jewish man presented a different side of what Jim Crow fights and presented. That was a ice cream parlor Bakery know that was Shah. Jahan's Bakery TV, if you wanted Brent Brown as you could go to Shaw's bake with about how about the gas station if you needed a black-owned gas station was the Texaco station it will soon and then behind him with a sweet job and that at a barbershop across the street. That was pits.

23:51 Drug store that was another drug store called cherries Apothecary. So so you is wrong as you were in the neighborhood you were protected from Jim Crow to certain extent but my grandmother always talked in it. Now whenever we walk downtown and get out of this neighborhood and you see white people don't look them directly in their eyes.

24:19 Hold your head down look down. When when you're walking down Dexter Avenue in front of Chris or Newberry or Montgomery fair. If whites are coming towards you step off the curb and let them pass what she was doing for me. It's preparing me to live in a Jim Crow world and not find myself getting into quote-unquote trouble for being disrespectful to White you had the Good Fortune of having your grandmother live in the same house with you and your parents mom and Mom my mother and father were both Educators. They talk in Prattville Autauga County. And in those days a lot of people don't know this but the but the unwritten law was that if you make your money,

25:11 In Autauga County you expected to spend it there. So they were not allowed to to sleep overnight in Montgomery. That was a teacher's dormitory in Prattville where they were required to stay during the week and on Fridays, they could come back across the Alabama River. Well, my grandmother kept me at our home 746 glass street during the time that they were teaching in Autauga County. So she was

25:44 She was there with me during the week while they were over imagine her grandparents were slaves.

25:53 Her mother came to Alabama as a slave from North Carolina and her father Levi miles came here as a slave from Mississippi.

26:07 So they they were and and and that the interesting thing was that they were members of Mount Zion AME Zion Church in hayneville.

26:19 And those who came out of painful to Montgomery naturally moved from their small Church to Mount Zion that they came from letohatchee. They removed from Big Zion AME Zion to Mount Zion AME Zion. So that was kind of the path once one came into Montgomery and Mama met him as a stone because her aunt

26:46 Lived across the street from is a stone's house and Mama tender junior high at Lovelace women's Stone was a teacher before I got there. I think Lovelace which was named for the mortician then and great businessman black. Businessman. Henry love is love. This was a high school at one point. I have an aunt who went there Stone towards their then became a junior high. That's when I went. I started second grade and moved on up to ninth grade to Randall was principal and now well, it's now a magnet high school, but it was an elementary school before then. I want to get back to your

27:32 Your description of our neighborhood because when we talked about our old Church Mount Zion, we were remembering our personal influences there. We were remembering those experiences that help to root us. I think we were equally rooted by that neighborhood and one of my biggest regret is that it is destroyed and I really always believe that it was intended in fact

28:06 I heard recently from a colleague who works for the city attorney's office that he has found some of the docket documents that reflect how the city fathers intervene with the federal government. Remember when it was time for the interstate to come through and basically

28:29 Designed that Interstate or had some input so that it was designed to destroy the heart of that black community. Remember that you describe all those businesses. That was the core of the black Business and Professional Community. There was no class distinction you had something about that was that I'm like today for neighborhoods are pretty much homogeneas on glass Street. You had those who were domestic workers who live right next door to school principals and teachers and children were able to see upwardly-mobile.

29:16 Individuals who may have had a car who would put a suit and towel and and go to walk to church even though they had a car walking was very much a part of that community and and Dom is so you had someone to emulate and someone to to come to the house play with the children of those who were up with the mobile and an insole that was a lot that that that Community offered and I didn't even remember. I forgot to mention the fact that we've been had two hospitals in our neighborhood black owned hospitals for absolute later. And we also had the adult school that was Lowe's those adult school so our but I think one reason we have so many good memories about Mount Zion as in the old Mount Zion is that it reflected our neighborhood.

30:16 Al reflected our community of black community when it was at its height. So the school and the church they all came together. They all came together that must think about another perspective for the old Mount Zion you hinted at it when you were talking about Reverend Bennett's talk. Let's remember Mount Zion for a little bit in the context of each place in the African American struggle for civil rights here in Montgomery talk to us about that the history of our church and its involvement in the Civil Rights Movement rev say had been a leader in the Civil Rights Movement before dr. King jr. Came to Montgomery and it was Reverend Bennett al pastor who succeeded reference a who became the

31:16 President of the Montgomery interdenominational ministerial Alliance and in that leadership role. He was in fact the leader of the movement when the Montgomery Bus Boycott occurred. He had chaired a meeting at Dexter Avenue that Friday after Rosa Parks was arrested and he it was decided then that would be a mass meeting at Holt Street on Monday, December 5th at 6:07.

31:55 But because of his leadership skills, he recognized the need to organize for that mass meeting that you just couldn't go into a room and all the sudden you got a program. So he called a meeting at Mount Zion that was held at 3 on December 5th 1955 and it was there that they organized and planned for that mass meeting that was going to take place in that meeting and Reverend Martin Luther King was elected to his very first leadership right there and we haven't been at Mount Zion worship since what is it? 1989-1990 you though have been inspired to do something about that building?

32:55 History will be preserved share that with us. We had been 100 feet south of where we are located at that corner. The interstate would have caused that building to be torn down but we were spared and end in Mount Zion is the only structure that stands north of that Interstate the Confluence of I-85 and I-65 that still gives some idea of what existed they had one time and we had planned to what we had tried to to sell the church as matter fact, we sold it got a bond for titles that if we tried to give it away then we plan to do what we call the demolition.

33:54 But my wife came to me and she said CPU. No, we just can't tell that building down. Think about it. We were married there. Our children would baptize their parents will funeral last from that building and many members of the church started saying the same thing. So we started looking for ways to to disable them in and I always go back to this Mantra which is when God gives a vision

34:23 Provisions follow and through many many public and private sources we have been able to raise over $1000000 to stabilize and begin to restore that old historic facility, which is stood at that corner of since 1899 and its present form but was actually located there in 1869 after having been organized in 1866. And what's your vision for it? Now? What where would you like to see us go with this project would like to see Mount Zion become a community meeting facility where those who are still living in that vicinity can meet and and and and help to learn about the history of that community and learn how to continue to preserve.

35:23 That community and what it has meant to to to Montgomery. And and the next thing is I see it as a a museum which will continue to sing the Praises of the West side, which was so beneficial to so many of us in our rearing your nurturing at Mount Zion are your nurturing at home that really keeps you passionate about this project. It's important to to to follow the parents. My mother was a trustee. My daddy was a trustee leadership is something that and you've been at the or trustee for how long

36:12 From 1973 until 2005 I guess leadership is something that is caught.

36:24 It it's it's a cult leadership from my mother and father and my grandmother. She was not as well educated as my parents, but she recognized that where there was a need action must take place. They recognized in in in that community. That was a lot of children who didn't have clothes to wear so mrs. Inez Goron Bonnie Edwards and Sally miles. My grandmother organized what was called The Sewing Circle and they would identify children in need of clothing.

36:58 And so

37:01 Outfits for the underwear to church and the school so Mount Zion in the people who worship their played a crucial role in in in in guiding children for Christ and and that has made all the difference. So you are honoring both your family lineage your honoring your father's and mother's at the old Mount Zion. When you assume the leadership of this restoration project to bring that edifice at the corner of Holt and Stone Street back alive. Is that right? One final question Charles Patterson Everett the four

37:45 What is the legacy of Charles Patterson Everett? And what is it? You have told your son who's Charles Patterson ever V. He must do to honor his legacy of Charles Patterson Everett. The fact that Charles was a slave on the plantation of Isaac Patterson and John Everett.

38:11 And he escaped at Plantation and that he went to Washington and join the Union Army and it was out of that desire to be free that he had a son who graduated from Hampton Institute.

38:29 In 1895

38:33 Charles that first job couldn't read his his signature was his mark his ex but his son was a graduate of Hampton who became principal here in Montgomery work with Miss, Georgia Washington, and there are no excuses. We are a great people.

38:54 And there is no excuse for us not ever doing what must own said do be your best self. That's the Legacy Castle powerful Legacy in my friend. I am happy to be your friend and to share part of this Legacy.