Outside Agitator: The Civil Rights Struggle of Cleveland Sellers Jr.

OUTSIDE AGITATOR

Copyright © 2018 Adam Parker

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Photo credits:

122, 125, 132, 135: Avery Institute of Afro-American History of Culture

134: Charlotte Observer

127, 132, 128: Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Standford University Library

135: Mark Stetler, Camera Works Photography Other photos, courtesy of Cleveland Sellers Jr.

Book Design: Kate McMullen

Cover design: Meg Reid

Cover photo: Mark Stetler, Camera Works Photography

Printed in Dallas, TX by Versa Printing

TEXT Janson Text LT Pro 11.2/16.2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Parker, Adam, 1965- author.

Title: Outside agitator : the civil rights struggle of Cleveland Sellers Jr. / Adam Parker.

Other titles: Civil rights struggle of Cleveland Sellers Jr.

Description: Spartanburg, SC : Hub City Press, [2018]

Identifiers: LCCN 2018019633 | ISBN 9781938235450

Subjects: LCSH: Sellers, Cleveland, 1944- | Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)--Biography. | African American civil rights workers--Biography. | Civil rights workers--Southern States--Biography. African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States. | Civil rights movements--Southern States--History--20th century. | Orangeburg Massacre, Orangeburg, S.C., 1968. | Voorhees College--Biography. | Denmark (S.C.)--Biography. | Southern States--Race relations.

Classification: LCC E185.61 .P24 2018 | DDC 323.092 [B] --dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019633

186 W. Main Street

Spartanburg, SC 29306

1.864.577.9349

www.hubcity.org

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

CHILDHOOD IN DENMARK

GENERATIONAL DIVIDE

ENTER THE STUDENTS

INITIATION BY FIRE

A TURNING POINT

ATLANTIC CITY

IN BETRAYAL’S WAKE

BLACK POWER

IN CHARGE

REFUSING THE DRAFT

UNDER FIRE

LEGAL WRANGLING, SNCC CHAOS

THE TRIALS

ENTERING A NEW LIFE

OFF TO PRISON

GAINING TRACTION IN GREENSBORO

PARDONED

WITHIN THE ESTABLISHMENT

CLOSING THE CIRCLE

INHERITANCE

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

PROLOGUE

CLEVELAND SELLERS JR. is soft-spoken, though his words typically contain some urgency and are informed by a deep intelligence. He has taken time to process his many years of activism, reconciling personal history with larger political and social trends, so he talks about his past professorially. His broad smile and expressions of friendship belie a ferocity fueled not by a raging heat but by a blue flame within that seems impossible to extinguish, even as he mellows with age. His easy manner obscures a certain determination, a drive to get things done, to explain the facts and make the point, to put things in order. He is a steady force, the reliable one who observes as much as he acts and recognizes when something’s amiss.

Patience should be his middle name. He affirms an interlocutor’s observations or small epiphanies with the encouraging air of a grandfather who long ago came to terms with an imperfect world but enjoys it when a younger person recognizes the truisms of injustice. He is, at heart, a teacher. He does not seek the spotlight; he is content behind the scenes. These character traits are partly responsible for the subdued charisma he exudes and the leadership status he easily achieves whatever the endeavor. These traits are informed by years of internalized stress that has resulted in some psychological and physical wear and tear and, possibly, has contributed to heart problems he is experiencing late in his life.

As a young man—tall and lean, quiet, good-looking, a bit severe—he tended to prefer the second row. He was well known within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), but hardly known outside of it—that is, until 1967 when he refused the draft and made headlines. Like most everyone involved in the civil rights movement, he changed significantly over the course of the 1960s, from an eager, clean-cut activist to a Black Power proponent dressed in a dashiki and wearing his hair in an afro. While most sensible young people tended to avoid becoming embroiled in racial conflicts, Sellers was among the few who ran headlong into the fray. He had a soldier’s ability to compartmentalize the issues and the dangers, and he tended to focus first on the former. It was only later, when he was reflecting on what happened, that Sellers would come to appreciate the perils to which he had subjected himself. In this way the stress of political activism accumulated within him.

The SNCC activist who organized voter drives in Mississippi, gathered evidence of discrimination and fraud in order to challenge the Democratic Party’s exclusionary racial policies, obsessed about SNCC’s inventory of vehicles and pushed students to delve into black identity issues became a significant figure on the government’s list of threatening black militants. By the mid-1960s, he was a target of the FBI’s covert COINTELPRO operation whose purpose was to infiltrate and delegitimize black organizations and to marginalize—and sometimes to spur the removal of—black leaders. On February 8, 1968, Sellers was attempting to convince protesting students at South Carolina State College to withdraw from a volatile confrontation with state troopers, police, sheriff’s deputies, National Guardsmen and FBI agents when the riot guns went off. The SNCC activist was the scapegoat and the only person to serve time in jail for what became known as the Orangeburg Massacre. The year 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of that tragic event in which three black students were killed and at least 28 wounded. It was the first-ever campus shooting in the United States involving law enforcement and one of the most violent episodes of the civil rights movement. It challenged the myth of South Carolina moderation and accommodation, and it produced the state’s deepest racial wound, one that still has not fully healed. Yet the Orangeburg Massacre was initially misrepresented by state officials and the press, and it was soon overshadowed entirely by another campus shooting in 1970, this time affecting white students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. Since the Orangeburg catastrophe, Sellers has borne the labels of scapegoat and outside agitator, and for decades was burdened by the criminal charges levied against him. He has spent the last 50 years striving to overcome an injustice that few today know anything about.

In the beginning Sellers was a foot soldier, then a bureaucrat. For years he remained in the shadow of Stokely Carmichael, the brilliant firebrand and dynamic leader on whom the spotlight was focused, for good and ill. But Sellers, too, was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War and an advocate of Black Power. He was an educator who rose within SNCC’s ranks and, eventually, within academia to advance his goals. It was many such committed people who made the movement possible and ensured its halting successes. Big speeches and TV appearances are important, to be sure, but the generals and majors cannot win a war without the sergeants and infantrymen. Excellent volumes have been published on Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, but the movement includes many other remarkable figures and historically significant events that have yet to be fully explored. As the history of America’s civil rights movement continues to be written, more and more books are devoted to fleshing out the facts, broadening the cast of characters, filling in the blanks, introducing nuances, dispelling old assumptions and giving credit where credit is due. Sellers is one of the leaders whose fascinating life story deserves to be widely shared. Pieces of this story have appeared elsewhere, most notably in his own autobiography, River of No Return: An Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC (William Morrow, 1973), and in two important volumes about the campus shooting at South Carolina State and its impacts, an updated version of The Orangeburg Massacre by Jack Bass and Jack Nelson (Mercer University Press, 1996), and Blood and Bone: Truth and Reconciliation in a Southern Town by Jack Shuler (University of South Carolina Press, 2012).

Outside Agitator recounts Sellers’ life in full, from his childhood in the tiny rural town of Denmark, through his years of civil rights activism and decades of self-imposed exile in Greensboro, North Carolina, to his eventual academic challenges and triumphs. It all began for Sellers in 1955, when he was 10. That’s when he learned about the brutal murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago native visiting relatives in Mississippi. Four years later, Sellers, inspired by the Greensboro sit-ins, helped organize a lunch counter protest in Denmark. He could not have known in 1959 that, by virtue of his birth date, hometown, quietly charismatic personality and family’s social status, he would become a determined and prominent agent for change in the 1960s, a victim of officially sanctioned brutality and, eventually, an educator who helped transform the way academia addressed matters of race, history and society. All he knew in the first 16 years since his birth on November 8, 1944, was that he had entered a decidedly segregated world, and that to be black in this world meant to fend for oneself.

Cleveland Sellers helped shape our history. He propelled himself into the great, unstoppable ocean current that circumnavigates the globe, albeit in a roundabout way, enriching regional waters with necessary nutrients, though he did not avoid all the shipwrecks. He rode the waves of progress, sometimes tumbling into the roiling surf. His experiences teach us not only about the civil rights movement, but about America and its values, about the ways its leaders have tried to disrupt the current, about the competing forces at play that turn some into martyrs and others into heroes. Sellers’ life-defining moment—the Orangeburg Massacre—is also one of our defining moments, though too few understand what happened and what it meant for our democracy.

We can learn much from Sellers and his ability to navigate a treacherous current with skill. He shows us what perseverance means, and what confrontation can achieve and what it can destroy. Most of all, Sellers shows us that progress is determined not only by the inexorable turn of the Earth and swirl of its seas, but by the actions of those who insist on fighting for social and economic justice. A better world is achievable, if we want it badly enough.

1 CHILDHOOD IN DENMARK

DRIVING INTO DENMARK today along South Carolina Highway 70, one sees but a shell of the bustling small Bamberg County town that once epitomized life in the South. J.J.’s Automotive Repair claims the intersection with Carolina Highway, the main drag that runs through the center of town, though its dilapidated state and lack of activity is an indicator of Denmark’s decline. Nice houses, well maintained with their manicured yards, are nestled among tall pines and cornfields on the outskirts of town. Historically, this is where the whites live; blacks mostly occupy less noble structures on the south side of Denmark and across the railroad tracks to the west. Clearly, there are still some who prefer this rural lifestyle, who remain in their family homes and who satisfy their material needs by driving 23 miles east to Orangeburg, or winding their way to Columbia, the state’s capital, 50 miles to the north.

In Denmark, population 3,000, only a handful of the stores on Carolina Highway are open today. An antique shop attracts a few customers; an art gallery founded by the late Jim Harrison (the pride of the town) remains open but without the steady customer base that once came to meet the artist. The Dane Theater, a movie house built in the 1940s, has been renovated into a cultural center. The fire department has a relatively new building. A park has been named in honor of Harrison, the artist. But the lights remain off inside many of the shops. After decades of economic and social stagnation, and a diminishing middle class, young people have mostly abandoned the town to get educated in Columbia or Charleston or elsewhere, and they have stayed away in their attempts to find work. The population of this hamlet has dropped nearly 25 percent since 1990. It is difficult to imagine—to admit—that during the Jim Crow era this area pulsated with life. At one time Denmark was home to a Coca-Cola bottling plant, a pickle plant, a furniture manufacturer. It was a hub for three train lines: the Atlantic Coast Service, Seaboard Coast Line and Southern Railway.

Cleveland Sellers, known to his family and friends as Cleve, was born here on November 8, 1944. Walking through the town, he points to the motel his father opened in 1969. Now closed, it was the first black-owned motel in Denmark. Later converted into apartments, the building sits next to Cleve’s childhood home at 432 Frederick Street, a modest ranch surrounded by trees, where he was raised, along with his older sister. He cruises slowly up Carolina Highway, a melancholy expression belying his matter-of-fact descriptions of what happened here 60 years ago. Sellers is good at explaining things, his discursive style honed over the years thanks to his political activism and academic experience. He remembers the movie theater, the afternoon activities, the solidarity among blacks, the otherness of whites. He recalls episodes from his childhood, the friends he played with, the pony he rode and his parents, who were well-informed, loving and protective.

CLAVE’S FATHER, Cleveland Sellers Sr., was among Denmark’s enterprising blacks during the days of segregation. He operated a taxi business, driving passengers between South Carolina and New York and people who were denied access to public transportation. For a spell he shuttled a blind doctor to and from patients scattered about the county. He ran a cafe. He rented properties. He even raised cattle at one point. The elder Sellers was a small-town businessman in a place defined by its rural surroundings. He had graduated from Voorhees High School, an impressive accomplishment at the time.

The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 gave rise to the South Carolina Land Commission, formed in 1868, which bought large plantations from white owners no longer able to manage them profitably and divided the land into small parcels, making it possible for poor blacks and whites, including some in Bamberg County, to purchase family farms at low prices. This created a new class of farmers, many of whom helped set the stage for the entrepreneurship of Sellers Sr. and other enterprising black men. In 1868-1879, the Land Commission sold farmland to 14,000 African-American families.

Thus an economy dominated by agriculture, and later manufacturing, provided subsistence to those who inherited the legacy of slavery and who managed to achieve self-sufficiency both despite and because of segregation. The black side of town was clearly defined and featured black-owned businesses, schools, churches and social groups. Sellers’ parents functioned almost entirely within this community. They married late, on March 23, 1941. Pauline Taggart, born in McCormick County, was 37; Cleveland Sellers Sr., born in Denmark, was 31. Both were success-minded and enterprising. Pauline, the better educated of the two, had received her Bachelor of Science degree in home economics from State Agricultural and Mechanical College (which later would become South Carolina State University), the first black school of higher education supported by the state. She pursued graduate studies at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia, though she did not earn a degree there. After her schooling, she returned to South Carolina and became a public school teacher, first at the Brewer Normal School in Greenwood, then at Emmett Scott High School in Rock Hill, then in the Columbia system, eventually ending up back in Denmark at Voorhees Normal and Industrial Institute, a school for young black students. By the time her two children were born, she was a dietician and teacher at the adjacent Area Trade School (now Denmark Technical College). One of seven sisters, she was a member of the AME church, NAACP and American Association of University Women. She was also associated with St. Philip’s Chapel, the local Episcopal church for blacks on the campus of Voorhees. My mom was a very kind person, and she was concerned about the community 24/7, Sellers said. She worked, so she had to put that kind of focus and activity on the weekends when she could squeeze it in. Despite her divided attention, she was very nurturing. I’d have to say I was a mother’s boy and grew up under her wing. Early on, Sellers learned valuable lessons from his mother that would influence his later activism and professional career: To have a successful plan you have to be organized. And to execute that plan well you have to have a strong work ethic and an ability to manage many activities at once, he said.

At school, Cleve Sellers sometimes would share his lunch with friends too poor to bring food every day. When his mother found out, she began to prepare extra lunches for those kids, and her discovery of certain families in need prompted her to reach out. She decided to take a family on, Sellers recalled. She would gather up leftovers from the trade school cafeteria and deliver them. Cleve was expected to help. The precariousness of poverty became glaringly evident when, later, a close friend left Denmark to pick tobacco on a farm in Connecticut and decided not to return. The friend ended up in New York City, where he died, probably of a drug overdose, Sellers said. His absence, and then his death, hit Cleve hard, teaching him his first lessons of loss.

Cleveland Sellers Sr. put his entrepreneurial skills to work starting in 1936. He launched the taxi service, opened the restaurant and ran the motel, each bearing his name. His success led to the purchase of land and homes that he rented or sold for a profit. By the time Cleve was a teenager, his father owned more than 20 homes and had become a leader in Denmark’s black community, writes Charles Marsh in his book God’s Long Summer. Sellers Sr. was a strong proponent of the Booker T. Washington school of self-reliance: Only hard work can lead to a better lot in life. He joined the military, becoming an army technician fourth grade, serving in World War II and receiving a campaign medal. He was always an entrepreneur, and that came from the industrial education that was part of Voorhees High School, his son said. It was all about building within the framework of what you had available to you.

That framework, restricted by Jim Crow, did not stop the elder Sellers from pursuing all sorts of projects. A lot of the time he was just busy working on one thing or another, Sellers Jr. said. In the 1940s and 1950s, when Cleveland Sellers Sr. operated his popular little restaurant and juke joint called Sellers Cafe, blacks in Denmark (for reasons of necessity) were relatively independent. The road into the town that passed Voorhees High School was dominated by small black-owned farms, and closer to the center of town, a number of black merchants catered exclusively to other blacks. The small town was not notably acrimonious during this period. It cannot be said that race relations were bad. Race relations were essentially non-existent; whites and blacks mingled hardly at all. Segregation was in force, and broadly accepted without very much dissent. Jim Campbell, a Charleston resident who was a student at Voorhees High School in the early 1950s, remembered the authoritative role Sellers Sr. played in the community. We would sneak away and walk that mile to Denmark at night, down the road past these cottages where a number of African-American farm families lived, and go to Cleve Sellers’ place, Campbell recalled. It was the only place in town. There, young people would gather to socialize, dance to juke box music and eat typical Southern fare—fried chicken and fish, rice, fresh vegetables. Always there was Cleveland Sellers Sr. keeping an eye on everyone. And he would always encourage us to be careful not to overdo it, Campbell said. He was like a community mentor. That’s all I knew about him.

Interaction with whites during this long period of segregation was practically nil. The only white folks we saw—that I can remember seeing—were people, a group of three, who would come annually to visit the school, Voorhees, Campbell said. I guess they were fundraisers or benefactors in some way. But we would get cleaned up, they would sit down front, we would meet in the auditorium and the choir would sing for them.

The Sellers family was part of an enclave that prioritized education. Pauline Sellers paid attention to politics, her son said. They spoke freely about the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. They consulted magazines and periodicals such as the Chicago Defender, Ebony, Jet and the Norfolk Journal and Guide. At school, young students were uninhibited, discussing the latest developments and their implications. The bus boycott seemed especially significant: We saw that African Americans began to move away from legalism as a tactic toward direct action, Sellers said.

His older sister, Gwendolyn Sellers Parker, called the Denmark of her youth a nice little town that boasted a solid, if small, black middle class: "We had our own community. We had our own doctors and dentists. And we had Voorhees High School