[Song]
I’m going to do what the Spirit says do. I’m going to do what the Spirit says do. And what the Spirit says do, I’m going to do oh Lord. I’m going to do what the Spirit says do. I sing when the Spirit says sing. I sing when the Spirit says sing. And if the Spirit says sing, I sing oh Lord. I sing when the Spirit says sing. Sometimes I cry. I cry when the Spirit says cry. I cry if the Spirit says cry. And if the Spirit says cry, I’ll cry oh Lord. I cry when the Spirit says cry. And sometimes the Spirit says pray.

Sing with me.

[Song continues]
I pray if the Spirit says pray. Yes we pray if the Spirit says pray. And when the Spirit says pray, we pray oh Lord. We pray when the Spirit says pray. And sometimes you have to march. We march if the Spirit says march. Oh, we march when the Spirit says march. And if the Spirit says march, we march oh Lord. We march if the Spirit says march. We do what the Spirit says do. Do what the Spirit says do. And what the Spirit says do, I pray you do oh Lord. We’ll do what the Spirit says do.

Thank you. Thank you.

The song has so very much meaning for me. Doing what the Spirit says do. In the journey towards social justice, being a part of bringing in the kingdom of God we have very, very many experiences and things that we have to deal with. And in the song, “Doing what the Spirit says do”, all of these things have very deep meaning. For example, singing when if the Spirit says sing. Well if this young lady who says singing song, music was the glue that held the Civil Rights or the beloved community together during the latter part of the twentieth century. That’s why you had so many different, diverse cultures, languages, races, etcetera working together so beautifully. Because that singing just kind of erased all of the superficial things that divide.

I can remember in the early days of the movement in my hometown when the Delta Ministry came on board – anybody in here familiar with the Delta Ministry? The Delta Ministry was the presence of the church, if you will, in the community, in the movement community. And when we had what we called our first Freedom Day in the life of the movement, it was held in my hometown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And we had been really experiencing a lot of adversity in terms of how we were not being received by the community. The official community, you know the powers that be, if you will. And we were trying to figure out how we were gonna pull this off and not get a lot of people beat up. Of course we knew we were going to jail. That was a given. But we just wanted some people from the outside who the larger community would respect their presence and their opinions to be a part of that so an invitation was sent to the National Council of Churches inviting ministers to come and march on behalf of the local people as they went on this big voter registration campaign. We were just simply trying to get registered to vote, that was really what it was all about. And we would probably have taken the next four hundred years to get registered down there if some other strategies had not developed. If we had not found alternative ways to deal with things. And we, I think maybe we thought maybe we’d get a handful of ministers to march for us while we crossed the courthouse steps and tried to get registered to vote.

Lo’ and behold the day before the big day, planes started arriving and trains started arriving and the people started pouring off there and when we knew anything, we had just short of one hundred clergy persons in our little town. They just flooded the place you know. And we were totally unprepared. We hardly any place for them to stay. I happened to have a big, long ramshackle house that had lots and lots of space in it. And we used up all of the beds, and the chairs and the tables and then the floor became that. And it was so funny. I have to tell you this, the first night in after everybody came in and shared their experiences of the day, and I’ll tell you something about that in a minute. Once somebody said, “Okay if you need to use the john you better come on because we are fixing it to retire in here and you not gonna be able to get there after we retire because there will be no space to walk!” But back to the relevance of the singing, it was so interesting because you see, we sing all the time. We sing when we were happy. We sing when we were sad. We sing whatever. So at Saint John that night, Saint John was the only church we could meet in in those days, we had the youngsters there and when the youngsters would sing, they’d really get with it. They’d dance too. They’d sing and they’d dance and they’d clap and you’d feel the spirit and it was amazing. After awhile, at first the clergy persons were - you know we are in a church building – at first they were kind of shocked, what’s going on. But before too long, they were out there in the aisle with the youngsters. Just going away you know? Just singing and dancing and clapping away. That’s what singing does. It just gets rid of all of the superficial stuff and helps people to be in harmony and as you get in harmony with each other, you also get in unity with each other.

Other times we pray, we cry when the Spirit says. Certain things happen in the journey like for example, we were at Oxford College in Ohio on the weekend when the three young men came up missing, failed to report in as they should. And those of us of course who were a part of the established community, we were all going through the day getting done what we had to get done regardless. But then after all of the volunteers who had come to us before their training, their orientation to go into Mississippi, after everybody was put to sleep, we all gathered in a little room somewhere there on campus. And we were very sad because in spite the fact that of whatever they were saying about why these young men had not reported in, we knew, we knew. Because one of the things that you dared not violate in the community was when you leave point A going to point B, as soon as you arrive at point B, you call back to point A to say, “I have arrived”. And while oftentimes the rules and rigs could be violated and it was okay, that one you did not violate because it was much, much dangerous to do so. And so we knew, we knew that all these hours had passed and those people had not surfaced and not called, we knew that they couldn’t. It was no question in our minds at that point. And so now that we did not have to be brave and everything because there people there with us like you. And they were like you; they were students mostly. We were just sitting there in the room. Nobody was saying anything. Everybody was having their private thoughts, etcetera. And then finally from somewhere in the back of the room, someone started to sing.

"Kumbaya my Lord, Kumbaya. Are you familiar with that? Kumbaya my Lord, Kumbaya. Kumbaya my Lord, Kumbaya. Oh Lord Kumbaya. Your children are hurting Lord, Kumbaya. Your children are hurting Lord, Kumbaya. Your children are hurting Lord, Kumbaya. Oh Lord Kumbaya."

And when the song started to come forth, we found our voices again. Because up until then, we just did not know what to do with this. But that singing not only reunited, but it released us and we began to share what was going on with us. And that makes it much more bearable of course when you can do that. And it’s that sort of thing that when you hear me singing I’m gonna do what the Spirit says do, it evokes all of these memories. These feelings. It’s revisiting the journey you know, in a very healthy and wholesome way.

Prayer of course goes along with all of that so we could encourage you and urge you to be aware of the Spirit, do not deny the Spirit, and listen for it because it makes a big difference. It certainly has made all the difference in my life. There are so very many ways I could have spent my life, but always, I seem to come back basically to the same thing. And that was from the time that I realized the difference in the communities, I always knew that I wanted to do something so that my community could, like all other communities, really be who they were and have all the opportunities that we needed. I will move more specifically to this formal journey if you will.

When the movement came to Hattiesburg, when the movement came to my town, I was an independent businesswoman. But even here, my goals and objectives were not about personal wealth, personal success, it was about providing opportunities for the people in my community to have alternative ways of acquiring that which they needed to live a decent life. My husband and I spent four years in Europe. When we returned to this country, my husband was stationed out at Fort Meade. Well at that time, there was not housing for black, noncommissioned officers on post and in the community that Fort Meade was located in, there wasn’t very much hope for housing for African-American military persons and their families so we lived in D.C. for necessity really. And while living there in D.C. it wasn’t very long before we knew that his military income was not going to quite give us the level that we were kind of accustomed to in terms of our everyday living. And so that meant I would have to look for employment, but at this point, I had two young children and I wasn’t about to go leave my children for no 8 to 5 if you will, across the base. I had to look for something else to do. I found it really, really interesting.

It was a company of young black men and women who had decided that they were going to go into business for themselves and they were going to manufacture their own products and that sort of thing. And in the meantime they had this huge chalkboard up in the room where you were finally interviewed by the President who called himself the Organizer. And so in the meantime they had written up there the names of the people who worked in that office and the kind of money that they made in a week’s time. But I didn’t know at that time what all that was about. And so he told me the story of how they came to be and what their vision was and the kind of persons that they were looking for to be a part of their organization. And finally he stopped long enough to ask me if I had any questions for him and I confessed. I said, “Yes - those figures up there on that board by those people’s names, how long does it take them to make that money?” He said, “ a week”. I said, “What? Make that much money in one week? Each one of those people?” He said, “Yes”. I said, “I think I’d like to sign-up”.

At that time that really was what we needed. We needed more income in our family. So I did and they did. And it was one of the, I know, one of the times the Spirit really got at me because I joined this group called the Beauty Queen group and I became a member of the Beauty Queen Company, which was a direct selling company making and selling cosmetics and household miscellany on a door to door basis. And so I signed up. I got me a little kit with stuff in it and I went home. And when my husband came in that night, he said “What’d you do today?” I said, “Well I got a job.” “Oh yeah. Doing what?” I said, “I’m going to be doing door to door salesman”. He said, “You mean you gonna peddle?” I said, “Yep”. “My wife is not gonna be no peddler”. I said, “Well I don’t know about your wife, but I’m gonna be a peddler”. Anyway, that started me, that really got me started to being concerned about, even though the reason I went there was one thing, but when I saw this small group working together and the impact that they were making on the community, this was very impressive. So I knew that I was gonna do this because I figured if they can do it, so can I. Well, as we moved along, the marriage got a little shaky. And so I took my two youngsters and I went home to Hattiesburg, Mississippi and before leaving, I spoke with the Organizer and asked him how would he like to have a branch office in Mississippi. He said, “Oh”. And I explained to him what my vision was and what I felt like I could do in Mississippi that was done in Washington D.C. he said, “You really think you can do that?” and I said, “Yes”. And so he said, “Okay. When you get in and you get settled, just let me know. We’ll see what we can do.” And I did and he did and I built a really wonderful direct selling organization right there in Mississippi and my focus was on those people who what they most had done was work in people’s homes, work in people’s yards, you know, the most medial kinds of things and the income was as medial as well as the work believe me. There’s nothing wrong with the work if you get paid a living wage, if you will, which is a big problem right now as you know.

Okay. So I really focused on providing employment for those people who otherwise would never ever have been able to do more than what there already were doing. And was doing it very well. I had people making unbelievable money in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And that’s what I was doing when the movement came to my town in the persons of two youngsters, maybe your age or younger Halice Watkins and Curtis Williams I believe. And I just started working with them because somebody had decided that they couldn’t come into any of the churches in Hattiesburg because the Dean of Clergy in that town had been given word not to open our churches to them. And so they were in my brother’s place talking and he said, well go talk with my sister, she might be able to help you. So he sent them over to my place. And sure enough I said he doesn’t control all of the churches. He might control most of them, but I know one that he does not control, let me call my pastor, which I did. And my pastor came over and we opened Saint John Methodist Episcopal Church, at that time, to these two youngsters so that they could be in touch with the community, tell their story, and invite the community then to respond to their story, which was we can change things in this city. We can change things in this county, but we have to be registered voters. And so that’s when the journey began in terms of my former affiliation with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and then the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, through which I received my training to do citizenship education, if you will, which we didn’t dare call citizenship education at that time in that place. We called it literacy training. Literacy classes, as we recruited people to work with them in preparing them to become registered voters. That, I came to understand, was really the key to first class citizenship. And at that time, that could be a very dangerous thing to do and so people had to first get clear in their minds, the importance of what that vote meant and what that vote could do for them before they could find the courage, most of them, to go down to the Registrar’s Office and ask to register to vote, to become registered to vote if you will.

Well I moved gradually from being a businesswoman to being a Civil Rights activist, if you will. And finally I found myself giving much more time to the work of the movement in the community than I was giving to my business so I finally decided I was gonna close the business and go full-time. And that’s what I did after having a meeting with the people in my business and explaining to them, listen this is not going to hurt you because what you’ve been taught, you can use it anywhere. You can use it anywhere. And you can continue to do what you’re doing. You can continue to receive your merchandise from where you have been receiving it and go on. And everybody was just so wonderful. Not a single person said anything negative about that decision and so that journey began that eventually transformed me from a Civil Rights Activist to I define myself now as a spiritual, social activist. And I’ve defined myself that way now for a number of years because I understand that’s what’s it’s all about. And I saw these young people coming into the community, living among us, eating what we ate, just really fitting themselves into the culture of the community. So this is the church. This is the church. If the kingdom of God is coming, this is the way it’s coming. It’s coming through people beginning to do what they have been singing about, praying about, preaching about. Becoming that. Doing that. Being that. That’s what’s it’s all about. And so that’s kind of the way my journey has unfolded and it has taken me more places than I ever dreamed of existed and it’s not all been easy, it’s not all been pleasant, but it’s been wonderful.