[R-G] Red Dawn

[Hunter Gray]

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:  6/26/05

Eldri and I much appreciate the good thoughts and messages and the virtual
card, etc., with respect to our 44th Wedding Anniversary. [And an Offspring
called.] But with Bill Mandel's wonderful example of 66 years with his late
wife, Tanya [and Eldri will certainly read your fine sermon, Bill], we do
feel  young indeed.

Early this morning, the most exquisitely deep-blood-red dawn that I've seen
in years came up over the mountains to our east.  And I recall the line in
1899 or so from a fiery speech given in the context of the Western
Federation of Miners during yet another bitter labor struggle in the Coeur
d'Alenes of North Idaho:

"And the Red Dawn will come over the Rockies and the money palaces of the
Rockefellers and the Morgans will be blown into rubble . . ."

Oh, oh!  Do I hear the thundering hoofs of the Homeland Security Posse
pounding determinedly toward us through the junipers and pines and aspens
and over the drying turf of Eastern Idaho?!

Recently, Eldri and I attended the first meeting of a Lupus support group.
There were nine people present from a wide area, six of whom were SLE [the
others were two spouses and a visitor].  I was the only Lupus Man.  Well
intentioned, the pleasantly conducted little meeting was hardly -- given the
nature of the illness -- uplifting.  I'll take John Gray's feisty fur
hunting band of Iroquois and Abenakis -- or the Western Federation -- or the
Civil Rights Movement.

On the latter note,  I've been assembling material [for my possible book]
relating to several organizing campaigns -- one of which was our very
hard-fought and quite successful project in the Northeastern North Carolina
Black Belt. I was SCEF Field Organizer. [Much of this, including some
photos, is on our large Hunterbear website. Scroll 'way down.]

In very early 1964,  I launched a major SCEF-sponsored project:  cracking
the rigidly segregated, thoroughly repressive, Klan-infested northeastern
North Carolina Black Belt -- containing some of the most poverty-stricken
counties in the United States.  This hard-core region had been isolated from
the main currents of the Civil Rights Movement.  Our SCEF Director -- Jim
Dombrowski -- backed us to the hilt;  as did  the SCEF President, the
Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth.   Valuable support was provided by Ms. Ella
J. Baker, a nationally known Black activist and Special Consultant to SCEF,
who had herself grown up in that particular   locale.  The editor of the
SCEF newspaper, The Southern Patriot, Ms. Anne Braden, provided valuable
regional and national publicity for us.  Up North, the SCEF fund-raiser, the
Reverend William Howard Melish, was extremely helpful.

We started with Halifax County.  Opposition was tough and violent.  With
hard work (among other things, at one point I spoke to over 120 community
meetings in 90 days), boycotts,  non-violent  demonstrations, and litigation
in Federal courts -- and, in time, political leverage -- we  were
increasingly successful.  And then we moved across the Black Belt, county by
county.

Clyde Appleton on BWB, as I mentioned recently, led the singing at our large
and historic Black Belt conference ["Civil Rights and Anti-Poverty" ] at
Indian Woods Baptist in Bertie Co.,  early March 1965, which drew about
1,050 people from 14 Black Belt counties -- plus several from some outlying
areas.

This fine statement by a key and extremely capable Halifax Co. Movement
leader and old friend, Willa Cofield, has been on our Tribute since soon
after its inception fifteen months ago:

51. WILLA COFIELD [WILLA JOHNSON]

". . .I'd like to share my own impression of John Salter, whom I first saw
on a 1963 television newscast being mercilessly pummeled by a group of white
men.  The attack took place during a Black student demonstration in Jackson,
Mississippi.  A few months later, John appeared in my rural, eastern North
Carolina community, where we Black people were staging our  own
demonstrations.

Originally from Flagstaff, Arizona and part-Indian, he was young, intense,
smart and completely committed to social justice.

Salter's civil rights record, his obvious sincerity, as well as his
willingness to take on the local racists, soon won over the most skeptical
among us.  For over a year, he worked in our community, facing daily death
threats, abuse, and the virulent hatred of local white people.

With John Salter's help, we initiated a countywide voter registration drive,
and when local officials set up obstacles, John convinced a battery of
topnotch lawyers to challenge the county board of elections in court.  Our
side won.   For the first time since the disenfranchisement of Blacks in the
late nineteenth century, thousands of eastern North Carolina Blacks
registered.

In the 1980s, those voters helped send two Black men to the North Carolina
Legislature.  In 1992, they sent Eva Clayton, a Black woman, to Congress
where she served for many years.

John Salter was not present for the victory celebration or for the happy bus
trip to Raleigh for the inauguration of Thomas C. Hardaway as Representative
from our District, but many of the bus passengers recalled Salter's
courageous work during the 1960s. He had helped break the fierce Southern
wall of resistance, thereby setting the stage for the Voting Rights Act and
the election of Black people to local, state, and federal legislative
bodies.

John drove with us the morning six of our children, including my own
six-year-daughter, integrated the local white school.  He found lawyers and
financial support, and we successfully battled the school officials and
politicians who tried to kill our movement by firing Black teachers.

In communities throughout the South, John Salter is remembered for his
selfless leadership and courage and as a man deeply and passionately opposed
to injustice.

Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, I have met many of his former
Tougaloo College students.  All remember him with the greatest respect and
admiration.

John has never flinched from taking  unpopular positions.  Those of us who
benefited from his determination to act upon what he believed right consider
that very quality a key factor in making him one of the truly great leaders
of our time.
                                                               Sincerely,
                                                               Willa M.
Cofield, PH.D. Enfield, North Carolina and Plainfield,
New Jersey


HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR]   Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
 Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
 www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
 and Ohkwari'

Check out Surprise Tribute:
http://www.hunterbear.org/special_tribute_page_for_hunter.htm

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunter Bear]