When Charles Pryor comes back to Augusta these days, he can go where he wants and do what he pleases.
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Paine College campus leaders who organized protests in Augusta during the 1960s are seen in this image from the 1961 Paine College yearbook. The students participated in sit-ins, boycotts and a bus demonstration.
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Jimmy Dukes, a 1962 graduate of Paine College and a member of the steering committee, was named in the lawsuit against segregated city buses. Mr. Dukes, 67, of McBean, Ga., said "it was a time of revolution," and students wanted to get involved.
Kamille Bostick/Staff
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Blacks sit at a whites-only lunch counter at the Walgreens in Nashville, Tenn., in February 1960. Paine College students performed similar acts in 1960 in an effort to integrate the city of Augusta.
Jimmy Ellis/The Tennessean
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Paine College students who were arrested during a bus demonstration in Augusta on May 2, 1960 are seen in this image from the 1961 Paine College yearbook.
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He remembers a time when that wasn't the case.
Growing up, he couldn't expect to be served at lunch counters. If he went to the theater, his seat was always in the balcony.
"That was just the way it was in Augusta and the South," said Mr. Pryor, 63, now a resident of Wesley Chapel, Fla. "We were all victims of the agony of segregation."
It was an agony not everyone was willing to endure.
Fed up with disparities and injustice, blacks across the nation stood up to put an end to the evils of segregation. It was just a matter of time before that struggle came to Augusta. When it did, at its center was a group of dedicated students from Paine College.
"We were the driving force behind the (student) movement," said Mr. Pryor, a 1963 Paine graduate.
More than four decades later, Mr. Pryor said he's seen some of the changes he and his fellow students demonstrated for.
"When we'd go back to Paine for reunions, we'd reminisce about how we couldn't do this or we couldn't stay in this hotel or eat in this restaurant," he said. "Now we can go eat where we want to eat and that sort of thing and say, 'OK, we had a hand in this.'"
Leading up to the mid-1960s, Augusta could very well have been two cities, recalled Silas Norman, 63, a former Paine student, now a Detroit internist.
"We (blacks) lived in our part of town and whites lived in their part of town," he said. "We had separate but unequal facilities. The transportation, the schools were not integrated, none of the restaurants were integrated. It was totally segregated, and the disparities were significant."
There were also the personal indignities, both private and public, that black Augustans encountered every day.
"There were no rights that we had that they (whites) were bound to respect," Dr. Norman said.
Yet by the time he and his classmates enrolled at Paine, the country was facing social change.
The success of the Montgomery (Ala.) Bus Boycott of 1955, and the Feb. 1, 1960, sit-down protest by four college students at a lunch counter at a Greensboro, N.C., Woolworth's Department Store had armed the young people with a tactic. With nonviolent direct action, including sit-ins, kneel-ins and marches, they could take part in a movement and influence their world.
"People, period, were saying, 'It's time things change.' And after the first sit-ins, the wildfire was blazing all throughout the country on black college campuses, and Paine was not an exception," said Julia Reese, 62, a former Paine College student now living in Augusta. "We all walked, we all sang and sat in."
Like thousands of other students across the country, Paine's undergraduates were willing foot soldiers for the cause, said Jimmy Dukes, 67, of McBean.
"It was a time of revolution," said Mr. Dukes, a 1962 Paine graduate. "You just couldn't stand by and let someone else do it. It was up to you, it was your issue, it was your future."
So the heads of student organizations on campus formed the Paine College Steering Committee to organize Augusta's leg of civil rights' burgeoning student movement.
The committee
The steering committee, led first by Joseph Stinson, then Dr. Norman, was most active between the end of 1959 through 1963.
They were a feisty, progressive, charismatic group, said the Rev. Dr. Maurice Cherry, the presiding elder of the Albany-Thomasville District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church and a former Paine chaplain.
"They knew very well what they were doing," he said. "They were well-versed on the issue of nonviolent direct action and how to articulate it."
The committee, which varied between nine and 15 members, met regularly to coordinate and organize local student demonstrations.
Although not the only group in town aiming to fight segregation and discrimination, the committee was a compelling force.
"The activism out of black Augusta came from Paine College and the Paine College students," said Mallory Millender, a professor of French and journalism at Paine and a classmate of steering committee members. "The students were the conscience of the community, and that was true throughout the '60s."
As the city's "conscience," the committee was adamant that its work extend beyond campus.
"I was the faculty advisor to the group, but I tell you the group and I came to the agreement that this was actually an independent student movement," said Marcus Clayton, a philosophy professor at Paine College. "It was something the students wanted to do on their own; something I thought they deserved to do on their own, so I stayed in background. ... It was exciting to see them."
Most, if not all, of the integrated Paine administration thought so, too, said Ellis Rece, a former religion and philosophy teacher who held several posts in Paine's administration, including serving as assistant dean of students during the steering committee days.
"Generally, the college stood behind the kids and kind of felt that they were doing what they had to do," Mr. Rece said. "Frankly, it was a fine hour for Paine College."
The coordination
Spearheading a movement is no easy charge.
Steering committee members immersed themselves in the tactics of safe, effective demonstrations, Dr. Cherry said.
"They were always taught to get the facts and once you have the facts, seek to negotiate and if negotiations don't work, take direct, nonviolent action," he said.
Though local and regional movement leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., would visit the students in town, the group also traveled to get information.
Sylvia Ryce Cornell, 63, recalls being sent in 1960 as a delegate of the steering committee to the second meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the civil rights organization made up of young people that aimed to coordinate sit-ins and support student leaders.
"They made the call for student leaders across the South, so (Paine) sent me," said the 1963 Paine graduate, now living in Stone Mountain, Ga. "I got to meet people from all over like (student movement leader and SNCC organizer) Diane Nash. I got back just brimming with ideas from all over and said, 'What can we do here?'"
What they implemented was a highly calculated, highly organized movement where students were informed of the dangers of what they were doing and instructed on what actions were appropriate.
"We'd have a meeting, a meeting and another meeting, and they talked to us and explained why we're doing what we were doing, why we had to be quiet and dress respectably," said Eunice Harris, 62, a retired educator and member of the class of 1963, now living in Augusta. "We never cut class; they told us the movement was not supposed to take away from our educational time."
Mrs. Harris was a "walker," one of the group of students who would march without signs or noise as others participated in sit-ins or other demonstrations. The walkers' role was purely diversionary.
That didn't make it less dangerous, but with such great leaders motivating them, Mrs. Harris said, the fear didn't register.
"In numbers you feel safe, and in youth you don't see all the repercussions. We were all together and they had us so excited. Even though it was a small part, we wanted better, wanted those who came after us to have a better opportunity," she said. "We wanted what belonged to us."
Confrontation
To start their protests, the Paine students decided to first target the privately owned city bus system, where blacks were required by law to give up their seats if a white person were to board.
It was May 1960, Mrs. Cornell recalls, when the students set out for bus stops across the city.
"We all decided to board buses across the city at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It created chaos," she said.
Mr. Pryor, a steering committee member, remembered how paired male and female demonstrators were assigned to a bus stop where two would take a seat at the front of the bus, while the others stood watch.
On his particular bus, which had loaded on Walton Way, he witnessed one young lady take a seat next to a white male passenger who then used his body to push her onto the floor.
Mr. Pryor said he and Paine football player Eugene Blocker were watching. Mr. Blocker stepped over the young woman and took her place on the seat.
"A young man and I stood in the aisle - his name was (Eugene) Blocker and he was a pretty big football player - we saw it happening," he said. "Well, Blocker stepped over the young lady, while I went to help her up, and (he) sat in the seat she had just been removed from.
"Now he (Blocker) was about 6'3" or 6'4", 200 pounds and he sat next to the guy and folded his arms as if to say, 'You want to push me off, bud?' And the guy didn't say a word."
The demonstrators brought buses across the city to a standstill, Mr. Pryor said.
According to reports in The Augusta Chronicle, 11 Paine students were arrested in the May 2, 1960, bus demonstrations and were fined $45 for violating a city segregation ordinance.
Those demonstrations would eventually lead to a lawsuit filed in August 1960 against the city, Augusta Coach Co., the mayor and the police chief by five students: Henry Taylor, Thomas Snowden, William Chambers, Jimmy Dukes and Silas Norman.
The suit claiming the students were denied rights, humiliated and inconvenienced would go through federal court for almost two years before the segregation policy was ruled unconstitutional March 2, 1962.
"We appeared in court to show that we were live, living human beings," Mr. Dukes said. "The rest was up to the lawyers. We (the students) picked new projects."
Up next were lunch counters.
At downtown department stores including H.L. Green's, Woolworth's, Kress and Grant's, the students sat down at whites-only lunch counters. Sometimes they were ignored; sometimes they weren't so lucky.
On Dec. 13, 1960, The Chronicle reported that a crowd of 25 to 40 white men surrounded three black students inside Woolworth's and violence broke out.
Although Chronicle reports say the students, two of whom were identified as James Stephens and William Didley, suffered minor injuries, Paine students and faculty recall the only incident of violence to be when Mr. Didley suffered serious stab wounds.
Multiple attempts by The Chronicle to contact Mr. Didley, who has been vacationing in Florida, were unsuccessful.
Meeting with violence in a nonviolent movement was no surprise, Dr. Norman said.
"I couldn't tell you what anybody said or what their faces looked like, but I can tell you that when I went downtown and asked merchants to desegregate, I was ushered into stockrooms in the back. That's clearly not where you meet people and expect to have a constructive conversation," Dr. Norman said.
Although veiled threats and constant taunting were commonplace, that didn't make them easier to take.
"Certainly some white folk took advantage of that, that we were a nonviolent movement. They would say, 'Hit them, they won't hit you back,'" Mr. Dukes recalled.
The one time he did strike back, he said, he was arrested.
Paine students, however, stuck to nonviolent tactics as they varied their targets. They participated in kneel-ins in attempts to gain entry to white churches, boycotted downtown merchants who refused to serve black customers, demonstrated against President Eisenhower's December 1960 visit to Augusta National Golf Club, assembled against an all-white May Park and picketed The Chronicle for its lack of coverage of the black community.
Yet after those moments in the face of hostility and sometimes indifference, there was singing.
"We'd all meet in the dining halls and hold hands and sing," Mrs. Cornell said. "We'd sing We Shall Overcome with tears streaming down our cheeks. We really did believe that."
There was anger, too.
"For me, (afterward) I was always mad," Mr. Dukes said. "Why should I have to fight for something that was guaranteed by my being born in this country? Why should I have to fight for the right to sit on the bus? Why should you sit me in a different section or have ill-equipped schools and accommodations?"
Seeing change
Although some of the steering committee and student body would graduate before it happened, change came.
"If these students had not had a mind and a perseverance to insist on change, change never would have been made." Dr. Millender said.
In the case of the bus suit, Dr. Cherry said, the entire state benefitted.
"It made it, not necessary, but certainly easier to break down segregation in city transportation all over the state of Georgia," he said.
To a larger degree, Dr. Cherry said, the steering committee might have helped keep the city faring well in comparison to other cities in the South.
"Because of their actions, Dr. King never had to come to Augusta and lead a march," he said. "Although he did come to visit, his attention didn't have to be turned to Augusta at that time."
Despite their accomplishments, former steering committee members say much can still be done.
"We've heard that line, 'The more things change, the more things stay the same,'" Mrs. Cornell said. "It's changed, but is it really different?
"Hey, we're sitting up front now, but if you look outside, is the landscape changing?"
Perhaps the landscape hasn't changed enough, but the view is better.
"Even though there are all of these disparities and so many of the 'isms' we don't like, Augusta's changed," Dr. Norman said. "The world is larger there. Back then, my world was walking distance."
Reach Kamille Bostick at (706) 823-3223 or kamille.bostick@augustachronicle.com.
A time of change
May 17, 1954: The decision in the landmark school desegregation case Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., is handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dec. 1, 1955: Rosa Parks and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People begin the Montgomery (Ala.) Bus Boycott.
Feb. 1, 1960: Four students from North Carolina A&T College sit in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, starting the student movement.
Spring 1960: Paine College students organize the steering committee.
May 2, 1960: The committee organizes bus demonstrations in Augusta. Police arrest 11 students for not giving up their seats.
Aug. 10, 1960: Henry Taylor, Thomas Snowden, William Chambers, Jimmy Dukes and Silas Norman file suit against the city of Augusta, Augusta Coach Co. and others for discrimination on city buses.
Dec. 9, 1960: Sit-ins organized by the steering committee begin at downtown lunch counters.
Dec. 10, 1960: About 60 demonstrators picket Augusta National Golf Club, where President Eisenhower is vacationing. Some carry signs that say: "Wrong will fail, right will prevail.
"Dec. 13, 1960: A sit-in at Woolworth's in Augusta turns violent when a reported 25 to 40 whites attack three Paine demonstrators. Two students are reported injured, one allegedly suffering stab wounds.
March 2, 1962: Federal courts rule in Paine students' court case that segregated buses in Augusta are unconstitutional.
March 17, 1962: Students gather to protest segregation at the city's whites-only May Park.
June 1963: May Park is integrated.
Aug. 23, 1963: More than 200,000 people, both black and white, meet at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech.
July 2, 1964: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin.
Special Section: Augusta's Black History
The importance of Augusta's place in the history of black Americans is hard to overemphasize. Individuals who called Augusta home and institutions that sprang up on its soil left indelible marks on American culture. Their influences continue to resonate and extend beyond the lives of any who live here today.
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