
          Slapping Together a Coalition. . . To Win Below the
Mason-Dixon
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 12, No. 1, 1990, pp. 6-7
          
          Virginia Durr: There's no sense trying to reform capitalism,
because it can't be reformed any more than slavery could be
reformed. It's a very bad system. You've got to realize that you have
lost the power of your government. You do not own your government. It
is owned by the people who have the money. And they pay the money
because they have to get on television or else they can't get
elected.
          Now, you can complain, and you can talk about waste and you can
talk about the Russians and you can talk about the Germans, but you
can't do much unless you have the power of your government. Now, it's
a democratic country, you've got the vote, you can control your
representatives if you work at it. You have to work at it day and
night. You have to form government clubs, voters clubs, you have to
watch them, you have to write letters to them, you have to see what
kind of devilment they're up to, you have to see who's slipping them
money. To sit here and complain is just a pure waste of time.
          We have a congressman [from Montgomery] who is paid by the military
contractors. And we know how much he's paid. Now he gets on the TV
every fifteen minutes; he gets elected every time because he's got the
money. Now here we sit, black and white, and we might as well be
talking about the moon as be talking about the President of the United
States. And all I can say is I'm too old to do it. I'm eighty-six
years old. Now, I did help to get the poll tax removed, and I did
really a good job. And I sure did help to get segregation removed, and
I think I did a damned good job there because I helped Mrs. Parks. On
the other hand, I do not know how to solve the economic
situation. That is left up to you. And I'm not gonna say you men
anymore; fifty years ago I would have said you men. You people have
got to do it. And it's just a waste of time to talk about the chemical
flowing down the Mississippi River. You have to control the government
that controls the corporations. Unless you do that you're just wasting
your time, and mine too. What possible solution have we been offered
here, not any.
          Rev. Andrew Turnipseed: I'll offer one.
          Mrs. Durr: Pray?
          Rev. Turnipseed: Well, no, I'll go beyond prayer.
          Mrs. Durr: Thank God.
          Rev. Turnipseed: We're all talking about politics...my name is
Turnipseed, just like it sounds, TU-R-N-I-P-S double E-D
          Mrs. Durr: He got thrown out of the church in Montgomery because he
let a black soldier in [during WWII]. So he gave up his life, his
church...
          Rev. Turnipseed: You're sweet to tell that. I'm seventy-eight years
old. I never was too quick, and I'm less quick now. I think if you are
going to get into politics, and that is the only place you can
go...the only power in the world that can deal with the corporations
would be a peoples' government. Now, how you gonna do that. Politics
as I understand it is a matter of coalitions. I know that word is
overworked; you give me a better one, I'll use it. It would be better
if we had a comprehensive program. What are those? Well, first of all
there's the black vote and, thank God, that has come to us
lately. That's the basis of a coalition. But unfortunately the blacks
are not in a majority in the South. I wish they were. The whites are
in the majority in the South. We've got to have a pool of white_people
who will collaborate with the black vote and have a composite
vote. Now, where we gonna get those white_people? We don't have to
have a majority of the white_people.
          Now, I will digress to say that in the last four years we have
elected a senator in Maryland, and a governor in Virginia just the
other day, and a senator in North_Carolina, a senator in Georgia, a
senator in Florida, a senator in 

Alabama, and got one coming up here
next year, and in Louisiana. I count five major offices. How did we do
it? I say we because I played around with it in Alabama. We had a
black vote that was 100 per cent. We had to pick up about 45 percent
of the white vote to slap together with that black vote, and you put
'em in. And how did we do it? First of all, there's the labor
movement. I know it's bow-legged and tired and run so far it needs to
rest, but time to reassert itself. We need the labor movement.
          Right here in Birmingham. The industries are gone, and you [John
Gaventa] very brilliantly showed us why they left. All the heavy
industries have gone abroad. We're left with a service economy, and
I'm not an economist, just a country preacher. But I know the steel
mills are closed. I graduated from Birmingham-Southern College in
1933, and that was in the depths of the Depression, and this town was
dirty black because of the smoke coming from the operating industries
then, the furnaces, then. They can come back. People do need
steel. And you made that point very brilliantly how at one of those
three stages they came here because we had the resources. In spite of
all of the rape against the soil and our natural resources, we still
have them....Now back to where I was on the coalitions. I said we need
the labor movement. Some of you people here have had experience with
the labor movement. . .
          Mrs. Durr: and the women's movement
          Rev. Turnipseed: All right, I'm gettin' to that. Just hold on. And
second of all...I've got to stand up. I preach better when I stand
up...we need a block of school teachers, public school teachers. The
public school system is absolutely being shot through with a
propaganda that we've simply got to eliminate. And those school
teachers, I don't care what their husbands might do to make a living,
these school teachers, most of them are women, and that's my next
point, but before I get there. You've got a school apparatus
here. Most of the folks who are against us have gone off to private
schools and they call them Christian schools--God forgive me for using
that cuss word--all right, they've gone to private schools. I live in
a little country town, a village, called Remar. A lot of folks in
Birmingham have never heard of Remar, and a lot of folks in Remar have
never heard of Birmingham. Anyway, that's where I live. And my people
in the church where I am, and I'm retired...but they're too good to go
to public_schools. And we have a public school there that goes back to
the experimental days when we first had consolidated schools. And they
won't go because we live in the Black_Belt and 90 percent of the
students in those schools are black. And so my people pull up and go
down the road five miles and have a private Christian school. Now
then, those people are not gonna go with us ever.
          But there are millions of white_people below the Mason and Dixon
line who are white and have the same interests as your constituency
has [Louisiana State Rep. Avery Alexander]. I understand you're in the
legislature. They have the same interests. I know. I've lived here for
three hundred years, and I'm just gettin' started. We've got to do
this. And now, back to the ladies, that's the third element of this
coalition . . .
          Voice from the audience: the "women"
          Rev. Turnipseed: Well, women. Whatever they are, they're my people
and yours too. By the way everybody here had a mother. All
right. There is discrimination. And everybody knows which party loves
to discriminate against the ladies, or the women, or the females--I
won't go into that. Scared to. I think everybody here knows what I'm
talking about. If a woman does the same work as a man, and a man does
the same work as a woman, is it right to pay one one level of pay and
the other another? Is exploitation right wherever it's practiced? Of
course not.
          Well, I've already listed three levels of supply for this white
coalition. Then, too, there are a few left, never have been too
many--well, I hate to use the word intellectuals. I don't know what
that is exactly. But add those harum-scarum intellectuals, put them
with those other three elements, add them to the black base, and we
can win any election we want to below the Mason-Dixon line.
          
            Edited comments of Virginia Durr and Rev. Andrew
Turnipseed at a workshop on the Economy of the South; Southern
Conference 51st anniversary, Birmingham, Dec. 2, 1989; sponsored by
the Southern Organizing Committee.
          
        
