Martin Luther King Jr. Day may have just passed last week, but Riverside resident Mary Cray’s memories of the civil rights activist go back much further than that.
“He was a wonderful man,” says Cray, who participated in several marches with him in the 1960s, and had the opportunity to meet him face-to-face. His philosophies earned him Cray’s admiration.
“I know that on his holiday, people play the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (which is a great speech), but if one truly wants a more detailed account of his philosophy, one should read his ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail.’ This was a wonderful writing,” she says.
“It is very hard for me to listen to his last speech, ‘I’ve been to the Mountaintop,’ before he was assassinated. I had such an eerie feeling when I heard him that day.”
Cray became involved in the marches when an organization in Chicago called CALM (Chicago Area Lay Movement) asked for volunteers while she was attending St. Xavier College in 1965.
For her first march, she recalls being met by a young black man at the Montgomery Airport in Alabama and being driven to Selma.
“While traveling through Lowndes County, which was pretty much KKK territory on the way to Selma, he had to hide us in the car so we would not be seen,” she says. “That was truly a scary area.”
She adds that a priest she had worked with and his co-worker were both shot in that area, with the co-worker dying from his injury.
And the environmentalist/former teacher is not likely to ever forget her other marching experiences either. Although the marches always were meant to be nonviolent, she was injured at one march and arrested at another.
Her injury was inflicted while marching at Chicago’s Marquette Park.
“After marching in Selma, we became well aware of the racism in our own city-especially in terms of fair housing opportunities and educational opportunities,” she says. “So when Dr. King was asked to come to Chicago to address those issues, I felt it was necessary to march with him in Marquette Park-not too far from my home in the Bogan area.”
She adds, “In many ways, it was more difficult to march in your own backyard.”
She says that about 5,000 people watching the march “were very vocal and throwing things.”
Cray adds that gang members (who had promised to be nonviolent for the march) walked alongside to try to catch the rocks and bottles that were thrown, and keep marchers from getting hurt.
Despite such efforts, King and Cray were among those who were hit. “I saw the woman who threw the rock at me,” Cray says.
A visit to the doctor after the march unveiled that one of Cray’s blood vessels had been broken by the rock-and there were other consequences.
“I did choose to move out of my parents’ apartment in order to protect them from the harassing calls and comments,” she says.
“I am still glad I marched. The people and ideas I encountered opened a whole new world to me. I felt that if you could not understand the humanity in other groups, you would not be able to understand your own humanity.”
Cray also maintains a positive attitude about her arrest.
“It was quite an experience and well worth the effort,” she says.
After several marches in Selma, the town’s mayor prohibited the marches. So the group marched to his home. Cray was arrested by the town sheriff.
“He looked right at me and said, ‘Girl, you must be crazy coming down here. I should be taking you to the state mental institution, instead of jail.'”
Cray said that she spent three days in jail, and never saw the charges against her.
Still, she says she met “some wonderful people of all races and religions-and non-religions.”
She also says that in addition to King, she heard inspirational speeches from Ralph Abernathy, C.T. Vivian, James Bevel and others before the marches.
She adds that she was “very impressed” with the nonviolent marches. “We sang a lot o freedom songs before each march, which helped give us courage,” she says. “We were taught how to be nonviolent and how best to protect ourselves if attacked. If we could not promise to be nonviolent in word or action, we were asked to either leave or stay and make sandwiches for the marchers.
“Nonviolent means not just not hitting back, but also not speaking or acting negatively. We didn’t block any traffic and marched only two-by-two on the right side of the sidewalk so as not to block anyone walking down the sidewalk.”
As for words she would give to anyone considering such marches, she adds, “Regardless of whether one is steeped in nonviolent philosophy or not, the technique is very effective. It is respectful.”