Our Place in Walla Walla #9: Civil Rights

Our place is tied to the Black liberation campaigns in the 1950s and 60s. Despite Walla Walla’s physical distance from the Southern states where organizers were most active, this community watched and felt the impact of the Civil Rights Movement in many ways.

For instance, the Whitman campus took opportunities to learn about the Movement and hear from racial justice activists. One notable event was a 1969 visit from the leader of the Black Panther chapter in Seattle, Elmer Dixon, described in a Whitman Pioneer story. (Dixon has stayed connected to his racial justice aspirations throughout his career, ultimately creating a business that allows him to work with organizations looking to make forward progress on this complex topic.)

Another example, several days after Dr. King’s assassination, Whitman hosted a community gathering for people to grieve and be together during that terrible time.

Students from Whitman and other local colleges were also connected to the Movement.

Daniel Clark ’65 lives close to campus. He is a lawyer and social activist, who, along with his wife Barbara, has catalyzed and supported many important local initiatives to preserve the environment and quality of life in the community. Some of the inspiration for a lifetime of social justice work comes from a connection to Dr. King:

“I actually had the honor to be present at Martin Luther King’s March on Washington. When I returned from a summer in Europe as a student ambassador with Dwight Eisenhower’s People to People program which we had just organized at Whitman, I was sitting in the New York City Greyhound depot waiting for a bus towards Walla Walla, and listening to Bob Dylan’s new song ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ on the jukebox, when I noticed a number of special buses loading to go to Washington D.C. for a march, and I was the only white guy on one of them. I joined the March when I arrived and was there for the whole day.”

Another neighbor to Whitman College, Beth Call, is also a longtime activist. Beth shared:

“I participated in my first civil rights march when I was 18, a freshman at Seattle University, invited by Poli-Sci Professor Sister Christopher. Seattle was voting on Open Housing—the right of everyone to live where they pleased. Sr. Christopher asked our class how many thought it would pass. Only we three freshmen raised our hands. Of course Seattle—a welcoming city, not discriminatory like the South—would pass it, we thought. But the rest of the class, all upperclassmen, knew better. Alas they were right. The measure failed. Disillusionment.”

Later in life, she took her experiences and, as a fourth-grade teacher at Assumption school here in Walla Walla, wrote a 15-minute play about Martin Luther King and the Movement with scenes including Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus, police arresting lunch counter protesters, and the “I Have a Dream” gathering:

“Kids made protest signs, sang protest songs including ‘We Shall Overcome,’ got arrested and didn’t fight back. We put it on for the school and parents from the 1980s to 2012.”

Another person you might bump into near campus is retired professor of Rhetoric and Debate, Bob Withycombe, who, with dozens of student assistants, conducted extensive research about the Movement, including investigating police surveillance of activists and suspected activists in the 1960s. When visionary civil rights leader Diane Nash visited campus Professor Withycombe interviewed them in front of a packed Cordiner Hall:

“My connection to the civil rights movement was purely academic. While I interviewed several people directly involved, I was not. I would, however, say that my decision to teach in the area of public advocacy and specifically offer a course in the history of the Movement has a lot to do with being a kid who watched the march on Washington on a small black and white TV in rural Oregon.”

Or you may be at a community event and bump into George Winter, who now lives in Pendleton and describes himself as a “Student organizer, civil rights organizer, labor organizer and peace activist.” During the Movement, Winterwas active with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (NCC). In a long interview at his home last week, hetold me how he was an organizer in Mississippi in the mid-1960s, helping with the Freedom Summer initiative:

“There I was in the Sunflower County Project, mostly in Ruleville, Drew and Indianola … We were allied in COFO with King’s SCLC, Amzie Moore’s NAACP, Dave Dennis’s CORE.”

Winter, who interacted with Dr. King when King visited Mississippi, told me that now many people have a very limited view of King and don’t understand or appreciate how his views changed over time and how he became more expansive in his social critique.

Finally, you might be walking through campus when the alumni board is here for one of their meetings and pass Bruce Jones ’67. Immediately following the March 1965 Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama, Jones organized a solidarity march from Ankeny down Main Street to the courthouse. Religion professors George Ball and Bob McKenzie, Sociology professor Bud Pfuhl and Walla Walla College professor Donald Blake led the way:

“George Ball and Donald Blake offered brief remarks, then Blake led us in singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’ FBI agents in suits filmed us from the courthouse’s second floor. I bet there were about 150 participants, mostly students but also local clergy and nuns.” A picture of that event is now atop the homepage of the Whitman Archives website. (Speaking of the Archives, many thanks to my wonderful colleagues West Bales ‘22, River Fremont, and Alexis Hickey, who found and pointed me to several items I’ve included in this column.)

Readers, obviously, my goal in this piece was not to give a comprehensive history of the Civil Rights Movement. Rather, I want to invite you to appreciate that all around us are people who are connected to the Movement, who were influenced by it, and who are available to share their memories and stories with you during or after your time on campus.

I also hope that this piece encourages you to bring curiosity to your interactions with Walla Walla residents—you might be standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change and in chatting with someone next to you might find out some surprising experiences they’ve had!

Best wishes for a successful semester, everyone! I hope you get to meet at least a few people who inspire you and encourage you in your aspirations to bring justice to your community.

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Are there aspects of the Walla Walla Valley that you’d like to learn more about this semester? Please let me know your ideas and I can try to include them in the topics I’ll be writing about. Leavitns@whitman.edu