Farewell to a Freedom Rider

In 1961, when Lula Mae White stepped off a Trailways bus in the Jackson Mississippi bus station and walked towards a "whites only" waiting room rather than the "colored" section, she was confronted by a police officer. He asked "What's your race?" Her answer: "Human." Thus began her life as a fighter for justice.

I never met White, but I felt that I got to know her during a memorial service held today at Southern Connecticut State University. Family members, friends and former students of hers at Lee High School, where she taught history for 28 years, spoke touchingly about her life and the lessons she taught them. It was a fitting send-off for one of the brave Freedom Riders who helped change the course of American history.

Some of the attendees at the memorial service.

White was arrested several more times in her life for committing acts civil disobedience--in Chicago, where she went to college, at a protest over equal rights for housing; during the teachers' strike in New Haven in 1975; and at a protest in support of unionized clerical workers at Yale University. When she was a child growing up in rural Alabama, she was outraged after a family friend was imprisoned for stealing an item valued at 25 cents. "She never stopped risking her life for civil rights and social justice," said one of her brothers, Ronald White.

In Alabama, her parents were were so poor they couldn't afford bicycles for the kids. So her father traveled to New Haven to look for work. He landed a job at the Armstrong Rubber Company, and the rest of the family followed--becoming part of the Great Migration.

She graduated from high school in New Haven and got a scholarship to study at the University of Chicago. After one of the first Freedom Rider buses in the south was stopped and burned by the side of the road, she decided that she had to join the movement. "I was excited to know that people without power could break unjust laws," she told an interviewer decades later. "I wanted to change history."

Before she got on the bus for Jackson, White wrote a postcard to her parents telling them she planned to get arrested and she expected to be in jail by the time they got the card. Which turned out to be correct. She served time in Mississippi's notorious Parchman prison. The guards took her bible and a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare that she had planned on reading, but she said the female Freedom Riders passed the time by telling stories and singing songs.

Take a look at the mug shot of White at the top of this blog post. It's one of 329 photos of arrested Freedom Riders collected and preserved by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, which became the basis of a book, Breach of Peace, authored by Eric Etheridge. "She was all about good trouble," Etheridge said when he spoke at the memorial.

I'm used to seeing contemporary mug shots of people who have been arrested for shootings, stabbings and beatings. They typically look sad, or desperate or angry. But these mug shots of the Freedom Riders are different. They were dignified, determined and hopeful. White told the interviewer that when she walked from the bus towards the "whites only" waiting room, she felt "uplifted."

During the memorial service, one of White's former students, Marcella Flake, said White "taught little brown girls like me to be hopeful and brave."

At the memorial service, she was still teaching.

A Homecoming in the Heartland

When I was about 10 years old, I had an experience that reshaped my image of what a woman could be. It was 1962 or so. I was standing on Bridge Street in Humboldt, Kansas, my Hamm family's ancestral home, when I saw what at first seemed like an apparition.


A tractor was barreling down Bridge Street toward the Neosho River Bridge. The driver was standing rather than sitting on the seat, with head held high and shoulders thrown back and legs spread wide. It took me a moment to realize it was a woman. She wore a sleeveless shirt and had muscular upper arms; she wore her hair short. She powered past me me on the way to who knows what. She was in command, and she was flying.

The Neosho River Bridge, built in 1932.

Years later, in fact, just a few years ago, I learned that the woman driving the tractor was a distant cousin of mine--who farmed a spread of land on the other side of the Neosho.

Yesterday, when my siblings and I were in Humboldt to bury our father, I saw that cousin sitting on the front porch of a farmhouse alongside the road with a large black dog resting beside her. We waved to her and she waved to us. She's in her 90s now. She doesn't farm any more. Another cousin told me she's now a tiny person.

But she still looms large in my memory and makes me think of the type of people who farm in southeast Kansas and a lot of other places in our country. I have tremendous respect for them--for how hard they work, the financial risks they face, their self reliance, and their persistence.

My father, Bob Hamm, was one of them even though, for the last many years of his life, he was no longer a farmer. He was shaped by his farm upbringing. He lived the life of the responsible citizen committed to serving society.

Dad left Kansas in 1960, but on Friday we buried his ashes in a grave next to our mother in Humboldt's Mt. Hope Cemetery. The cemetery lies just east of the land he farmed when my elder brother and I were children, and just to the north of the spot where a brick factory owned by our ancestors had once stood. He had been born in another farmhouse about a mile from where we stood.

When I looked at the small hole that had been dug in the earth of the cemetery (by the nephew of one of his childhood friends) and at the rich, almost-black dirt that had been piled next to the hole, I felt that this was the perfect place for him to end up.

We don't get back to Kansas often. A couple of years ago my siblings and I took our father back to his hometown for what we all knew would be his last visit. It was a totally satisfying time--of fond memories of people who have passed away and places that have been transformed. This time our visit was full of love for each other and for our cousins, who kept us company at the grave and around town.

On our visits, we follow a beaten path--stopping at the house where our father was born, the home of our great-grandparents, our cousin's trailer hitch factory, the land our great-great-grandfather farmed on the banks of the Neosho after he served the Union Army in the Civil War, and the downtown square, where our great-grandfather, James Willis Hamm, played the cornet in a small community band that performed in a gazebo on the town square.

James Willis Hamm, 1865-1947.

Thanks to the efforts of some of our cousins, Humboldt, which once seemed to be on the verge of being a ghost town, is full of life and hope. It looks better than it has ever looked in my lifetime.

I have done very little actual farming in my life, but I have a romantic attachment to it. On this trip, I asked a cousin if he would mind taking me out in the combine to harvest corn. He readily agreed. I was thrilled.

A combine is like a mobile corn processing factory. The tines on the front strip ears off the stalks as the 25-foot-tall machine moves relentlessly forward, gobbling up six rows at at a time. The machine chops up the stalks, shucks ears and shears the corn from the cob. The corn kernels get blown up a pipe to a hopper sitting on top of the combine and the rest gets blown out the back onto the field.

When my cousin's father and my father were were  teenagers, they plowed the fields using mules or horses and harvested corn by hand. Today's automated and air conditioned harvest factories are wonders. But my cousin tells me that some farmers now use driverless combines. Trucks pull up alongside the machines when the hoppers are full and offload the corn without the combine having to stop for a minute.

Dick Works and a couple of his cousins.

My farmer cousin, Dick Works, is thinking he will farm for one more year. After that, land that has been in my family since the 1850s will be worked by others. So I'm glad I got to ride the combine while I still had a chance.

When we were in the cemetery, before my father's burial, we stood at a nearby grave site while yet another cousin buried the ashes of her grandmother, my father's aunt. My cousin spoke lovingly and movingly of her grandmother.

It reminded me of a truth that I have contemplated repeatedly over these past few years, as I attend more funerals than weddings: History books tell the stories of the march of human progress through the tales of kings and queens, generals, and captains of industry The stories of the millions of regular people are ignored, and, typically, when their children and grandchildren die, they are forgotten. But, in my view, it is these people--people like my father and his aunt and the cousin who drove the tractor down Bridge Street--that really move our civilization forward. I tip my hat with respect to them.

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It turns out there's a lot to see and do in the heartland in September. Here are some shots from the Great Oklahoma State Fair, in Oklahoma City. I sampled my first corn dog, and it was delicious.

Ghosts of Industry: Christow, England

The countryside in and around the village of Christow, in the southwest of England, is as bucolic as all get out. The hillsides are covered in trees and sheep-filled meadows. The houses are beautiful old stone structures, and, in some cases, they have thatched roofs that seem to have been around since medieval times.

Much of the country around there is part of Dartmoor National Park, and there are awesome moors nearby where heather-covered hills undulate far into the distance.

You drive along one-lane roads where the hedges stand like soft green walls, and, in places, the leaves brush both sides of your car as you pass through. And when a car or tractor comes from the opposite direction, watch out! You may have to back up 20 yards to find a place in the road that's wide enough to accommodate two vehicles.

While walking, or between infrequent encounters with autos, you might see a fox trotting along the road or hear people talking on the other side of a hedge--but never see them.

Former Bennah Mine headquarters.

Yet this delightful pastoral scenery hides a surprising past. From the early 1800s until the 1950s, this was a bustling mining region. They mined silver, lead, copper and other metals in pit mines powered in the early days with steam turbines.

That charming old farm house was once a mine headquarters. The tumble-down stone wall was the remnants of a powerhouse. Those handsome stone chimneys once took away the smoke of burning coal.

Former powerhouse and chimney.

The only pub in Christow, the Artichoke Inn, has been operating since at least 1165--and most probably longer. Nathan, the manager, told us it had been a recruiting site during the Crusades. He also told us it was haunted by the ghost of an old woman. She passed by while he was sitting at the bar one night. The sight of her made the hair on his arms stand on end.

There were some wonderful old photos on the walls of the Inn.

 

Some of the mine shafts went down 500 feet. The miners blasted the rock faces with an explosive jelly, gelignite, which was made by dissolving cotton in nitroglycerine and mixing it with wood pulp and saltpeter. After blasting, they dug out chunks of ore with picks and shovels.

I found a local oral history book in the house where we stayed. They used horses on the farms until the mid 1930s, when tractors came in. There was no electricity in the village until 1949. One of the oldsters, Len Bushen, said: "The valley used to be very productive. There were the mines, two quarries, and the concrete works--and now there's nothing. Taken over by big firms and then shut down."

This has been the pattern all over the world during the past 150 years. Locally owned businesses are sold to large corporations based elsewhere--which maximize profits and have little regard for the local people or environment. Then bad stuff ensues.

We had a drink in the Artichoke Inn.

My nephew James told me that mine operators in Mexico brought in miners from Devon. The miners took with them a local dish, the Devon Pasty. which is made by folding meat and vegetables in a pastry dough and baking it. The pasties were practical for taking down into the mines. In Mexico, he said, the Devon Pasty evolved into the empanada. This story is echoed by others, but I read elsewhere that empanadas came to central and south America from Galicia, in northwestern Spain. So, who knows?

I want to leave you with a couple of bucolic photographs:

Moonrise over the hedge.

Poet Mary Oliver said that the spirits of the dead rest in the tops of trees. I would add: hedges. Our patriarch, Bob Hamm, who died in February, was watching over us in Christow.

Ghosts of Industry: New Haven's Mill River District

New Haven has been in existence since 1638, so you can trace much the industrial history of the United States here. Eli Whitney was the first to use interchangeable parts in manufacturing--at his musket factory. He later invented the cotton gin. Many industries rose up and flourished here, for a time, at least, including horseless carriages, automobiles, toys (Erector Sets), shoes (rubber boots), clocks, locks, garments and guns.

While many of the old factory buildings have long since been torn down to make way for the future, others have been converted into apartment buildings and offices, and some are abandoned or ruins.

One of the wonders of Rome is that you can be wandering down a nameless street and come upon an ancient ruin on a lot sandwiched between a coffee shop and a laundramat. In New Haven, it's the ghosts of industry that suddenly appear before you.

Elihu Rubin, in a photo from his web site.

Last week, as part of New Haven's International Festival of Arts and Ideas, I participated in a guided tour of the city's Mill River District, which happens to be next to my neighborhood. The tour was lead by Elihu Rubin, a professor at Yale School of Architecture, who is an urbanist and a fan of old industrial buildings. He described the area we were to walk in as a "ghosted landscape."

In one of his courses, he invites students to reimagine uses for some of the city's ruined industrial buildings.

It was raining during the entire tour, so we started in the shelter of the Interstate 91 underpass on Chapel Street. The boundaries of the Mill River District aren't that clear. As best as I can make out, it begins in what was the industrial section of the old Wooster Square neighborhood, what was left after the highway was built through it. It's on both banks of the Mill River. And it creeps over into the the western and southern parts of the Fair Haven neighborhood.

There are still a cluster of old industrial buildings along Chapel Street (the main road running along the bottom of this Google satellite image.) Some are still being used. Others are abandoned. And some are slated for renewal and reuse.

This was the home of the Armstrong Co., a large maker of horseless carriages. In these loft-style buildings, there were no interior load-bearing walls. Instead, huge wooden timbers supported the floors. That made the buildings adaptable for new uses--and helped them survive changes in the economy.

Many businesses lived here since the original factory shut down. Rubin dug up some facts about the building's history from city directories in th 1950s and 1960s. During those times, the tenants' businesses included frocks, paints, oil, tool and die, metal finishing, a luncheonette and a barber shop. This abandoned storefront was originally the doorway through which the carriages passed. The Armstrong Co. building is now to be turned into luxury apartments.

The building next door until recently housed Berkley Hall Upholstery. The last of the family members in the business still does the work--but now it's in the basement of his suburban home. Most of the interior is a single open space. It would be a fantastic place for a community theater. "This is a gem. We must preserve it," says Rubin.

Rubin isn't hung up on 18th and 19th century buildings. Here's an old "service station" from the 1930s that's on East Street. It's nearly surrounded by vacant lots.

This is the remains of the clock tower for the New Haven Gaslight Co. Rubin points out that manufacturing industry changed the perception of time. These organizations wanted to get stuff done efficiently and on deadline, and putting a highly visible clock on top of the headquarters building sent that message loud and clear to employees.

Here's the facade of the New Haven Gaslight Co. Rubin points out that in the early 19th century, firms sought to project their status in the community by erecting handsome buildings facing the streets. He calls it, "a gift to the street--a symbol of caring to the community."

The Chapel Street Bridge, built in the 1930s, spans the Mill River. The span swings sideways to let tugs and other small ships slip past.

A view from the bridge.

Imagine a bustling wharf in 1890, perhaps supporting the city's then-thriving oyster industry.

Here's another view from the bridge. The United Illuminating Co.'s English Station, which operated from 1929 to the early 21st century, is to the left.

In much earlier days, this was a Ford Motor Co. plant. They finished the assembly of cars here. Now it's a printing plant, but it's for sale.

This is our Roman Coliseum, the Bigelow Boiler factory. A majestic ruin that runs the length of a football field. They made huge steam boilers here for nearly a century. Then squatters crashed here. Its future is uncertain. Rubin thinks that perhaps this building should be preserved as a facade, an urban sculpture.

It's on a flood plain, so you can't invest a lot of money here. "I think buildings like this should be preserved without a use because they provide real character," Rubin says. "We don’t know how this neighborhood will evolve. It’s so special. There’s nothing like it. It would be sad to take them down."

During the period when the Mill River District was a center for the energy industry, huge concrete structures cradled gas tanks. This is the last remaining structure. One of Rubin's students suggests converting it into an outdoor performance space.

 Fair Haven was and is still a working-class neighborhood. It's full of duplex houses like these.

At one time, the city was networked with trolleys that ran on iron rails. This was the trolley barn. It's now a wood refurbishment operation.

The Powerhouse Building was where The Connecticut Co. generated electricity to power the trolleys.

This little detail on the facade of the building might be a flower, or maybe it represents a power turbine.

This is the ruin of UI's original power plant in New Haven. Built in 1890, it was probably one of the first power plants in the United States. It is succumbing to what Rubin calls "demolition by neglect." The bricks started to topple onto the sidewalk, so the city ordered it taken down.

One of Rubin's students proposes preserving the facade of this building and turning the back side into an outdoor "museum of dirt," where visitors can learn about the legacy of industrial pollution and think about what should be done about it.

I find beauty in old industrial canals.

Here's a view of the New Haven Clock Co. At one time, it was the largest clock factory in America. Later, it was occupied by squatters, illegal nightclubs, a motorcycle club (The Badass White Boys), strip clubs, artist collectives (including mimes), punk rockers, skaters, drug dealers, armies of stray cats, etc. Now it will hopefully be turned into living and studio lofts for visual artists.

The last strip club in the clock factory, Scores, was recently evicted.

The Mill River District is just one of a number of areas of the city where the industrial past meets the uncertain present. While there are a couple of historic districts in the city where important old homes are preserved, the old industrial buildings are at the mercy of capitalism, the weather, and rising sea levels. What will become of them?

Rubin would like to see New Haven adopt new policies aimed at preserving as many of these structures as possible. Perhaps the city could require property owners to protect the buildings from the weather? Could it take ownership of some important buildings that are under threat using eminent domain?

To me, the questions he raises are essential. We must preserve these ghosts of our industrial past. They remind us of where we came from and impress upon us our responsibility for helping to determine the course of our shared future.