Oral History/Interview
Claire Patrese Sams Milligan
Session #1 Feb 2, 2023 (Unedited)

Video

Bruce Hartford:

[inaudible 00:00:00]. Okay. All right. Well, my name is Bruce Hartford. I'm with the Civil Rights Movement Archive. I'm here today with Claire Milligan. Claire, why don't you start off with introducing yourself and then telling us something about your childhood and background, or whatever you want to share on that.

Claire Milligan:

Okay. My name is Claire Patrese — Let me see. How many names am I going to give you? All of them. Claire Patrese Sams McCall Milligan. Just to jump right in, I will be 71 years old in 20 days. This advent of the year, of the seventies, is a special time in my life.

I was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1952. One of my friends reminds me that I was born two years before Brown v. Board of Education. That statement is an indicator of how my life has wound up in the movement, and in our peoples history.

I was the only child of the marriage between Eva and Eva Sams, Eva McCall and Oliver Sams. I used to say that my father, Oliver, nickname OC, was a sperm donor, because I never met him, and the absence of his being in my life is a factor of in terms of who I am, and how I move about the universe.

I grew up with my mother, and her parents, my maternal grandparents here in Montgomery. My grandfather drove his car during the bus boycott, and so I've been — I tell people I've been in the movement all of my life, because I was three years old, riding with him to take the women to work.

One of the women was a neighbor and she tells me that I used to pout, so that he would take me with him on his morning routes, rather than dropping me off at nursery school. But I grew up in the movement.

Montgomery is home. I grew up in the Baptist church. I was always sensitive to the plight of what people call the least [inaudible 00:02:37], and I don't like that translation of that scripture, but I've always been concerned about people. I am a people person, and throughout high school and — Well, all of my life I've just been an activist for the underserved, the underdog.

I finished — I went to Alabama State, had a laboratory school. There were 31 people in my graduating class. I went to a very small private school.

Hartford:

This would be [inaudible 00:03:10] you're talking about? This would be high school?

Milligan:

High school, 31 in my graduating class in 1969. When Reverend King was killed, that marked a turning point in my militancy. I was always concerned about the lives and the livelihood of marginalized people and oppressed people, mostly. At that point in my life, it was mostly Black people that I was concerned about.

When Reverend King was murdered, though, I found my high school journal a couple of weeks ago, and I note in there that, at that point, I became a Black militant. I wrote in 1969 in my journal that, "I'm Black and I'm proud" became one of my mantras, the night that he was killed.

I was in the Selma to Montgomery march on the last leg of it. Maternally, my mother and my grandmother and her sisters were all school teachers, and segregation was of such in Alabama during the boycott, that people, schoolteachers could lose their jobs if they participated in any of the civil rights activities, and so there was a — It was just an understood fact that I could not be active in any of the demonstrations.

But when the Selma to Montgomery march came through in March of '65, I decided that I was going to be in that march. My grandfather that drove me in '55 and '56, and I rode with in the bus boycott, in March of '65, drove me to St. Jude School March the 24th, which was the ninth boycott of — The marchers got into Montgomery from Selma, and there was a big performance at St. Jude's in the grounds there. Sammy Davis Jr, Peter, Paul and Mary, all those entertainers were there. It was rainy and muddy and stuff but I went that night over to St. Jude and then that next morning, my mother or grandmother, somebody fixed me a lunch and my grandfather took me back to St. Jude to meet the marchers as they marched in from the campground into downtown Montgomery.

That was March the 25th of '65. I remember that, because my mother died on March 24th of '95. March 25th was my first encounter in a non-adversarial relationship with white people. We were literally marching holding hands, singing We Shall Overcome. I'm marching down up Dexter Avenue holding a male clergy, because I remember the collar, white man's hand singing. Something — It was an epiphany for me to be in that non-adversarial relationship, because as a child, I grew up spitting in the white water fountains because ours were rusty and the water was hot and metal and the white fountains were pristine marble. The water was always cold.

I had this just instinctive, "I'm anti-white" approach to life. In that march, in that march in the month of March, I realized that we were all human beings, and so something happened to me in terms of my dislike, what had been a dislike for people who through no fault of their own were white. That was a turning point, March of '65. I graduated in '69.

Hartford:

Could I hold you for a minute? Is it all right if I interrupt?

Milligan:

Absolutely. Please do. Please interrupt me. Yeah.

Hartford:

I want to come back to — Let's dig a little deeper into the march.

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

That was a school day.

Milligan:

Yes.

Hartford:

I remember that as we marched along, we saw principals trying to hold Black students into class and them jumping out the window to come join the march, but your grandfather brought you to the march, even though, it was a school day. What do you think about that? That was sort of a rebellious thing to do.

Milligan:

Yeah. I have always been rebellious like that. My mother and my grandparents, and some of my godmothers tease me that I have just been that kind of person. When I've had a position about something, I stood my ground.

When the marchers would go through the city of Montgomery, the week before the Selma to Montgomery march, SNCC and all y'all were here and Jim were here with marchers combined with Tuskegee University students, TEEL had demonstrations in downtown Montgomery and they would march through Alabama State's campus and we would be looking out the window, and they would be telling us we could not join them.

I had gone through that those weeks before the Selma to Montgomery march, being told I could not leave the campus. When I made up my mind that I was going to march on the 25th, they kind of had to go along with me. I don't know if I said, but I probably acted as though if you don't take me, I'll get there some kind of way anyway. They had to put up with me.

Hartford:

That's interesting that you refer to that week before, the two weeks before, because at that point, Montgomery was like an armed camp occupied by the state of Alabama troops. I mean, it was incredibly dangerous. What were your thoughts? Talk about that.

Milligan:

I don't remember those weeks. I remember the marchers coming through Alabama State's campus, and I remember us looking out the window and not going, but I don't remember what happened. I know that they congregated at the Ben Moore Hotel at the intersection of Jackson Street and High, the Ben Moore is still there. Mr. Moore, the owner Ben Moore, was my neighbor. I lived in what was called Centennial High. It was a section of Montgomery where we lived. I lived around the street from Ben Moore.

Hartford:

That's where SNCC had all its meetings.

Milligan:

Exactly. Exactly. I don't remember what happened during those days. I just remember we couldn't go. Stuff was on the news but I was kind of separated from it, but something happened between those weeks and the 25th, and I don't recall what — Something had to have happened that told me, "You're going to do this, Claire. You're not going to stand out. This isn't going to go anymore."

My cousin, Gwen Patton, was active, was president of the student body at Tuskegee at that time, and so Gwen — I didn't know it then. We talked about it since then. I didn't even know about Gwen's activity and all of that back then. That's another ironic thing in my life, how my life is tied into stuff, because there's my cousin leading this march and I couldn't go, but I did go the weeks after that.

I asked one of my elders, Reverend Solomon C, I think some say C, some say Say, I asked him what was the difference in '65 and '55 with the church's participation? Why weren't the churches active in '65? You know what he said? He said, "One word." I said, "What's that word, Reverend?" "Stokely." That the reason the Black churches in Montgomery were not active in '65 was Stokely. That was an insightful thing for him to engage me in a conversation about that.

Hartford:

You took that to mean that Stokely Carmichael of SNCC had somehow offended the churches and that's why they didn't participate?

Milligan:

Mm-hmm. They felt — I don't know if offense is the word. Maybe threatened. There was not the — The Black church was not in the lead in '65 as it was in '55 in Montgomery.

Hartford:

Yes. I think that's true.

Milligan:

That's no small thing. That's a matter of, to me, a matter of record, of import for the historical record, that the churches were not — 

Hartford:

There was that whole confrontation at [inaudible 00:12:47] Avenue Baptist Church about them throwing the demonstrators out. I remember that. Yeah.

Milligan:

Yeah.

Hartford:

You know, Selma is very famous, right?

Milligan:

Right.

Hartford:

For all of this stuff. There's a lot less known about what happened in Montgomery in March of 1965. There was two or three weeks of major demonstrations, violence, arrests, and then this huge, earth-shaking, historical march goes through. How did it affect people? In the Black community — Well, either in the Black community or the white community but what was the effect?

Milligan:

From my perspective, it was — The effect was minimal. It was as though this — You know, when there's a huge storm and the sky is all gray and cloudy and stuff, and then the next day, it's a pretty sky? It was that kind of a thing, that this big major event, these major events happened, and it was back to life as usual. There was no substantive change based on that.

Montgomery was not a different city. When I reflect on those early weeks in March of '65, it's really amazing how we really didn't talk about it. There was a group of activists, the students at Alabama State, the students at Tuskegee but in the main, it was those other people, those outsiders.

Now we had E.D. Nixon was active behind the scenes during that time, so there were different levels of activism going on, but there was not a big Montgomery is the mecca of the movement at this point. There was not that sense in the city at all.

Hartford:

How interesting. The impression I had was that Selma was never the same afterwards. I mean, for good or bad, but what happened in Selma transformed the relations of people. I remember on that last leg, the contrast between walking through the Black community and then we got into the downtown, which was the white territory, in which there were counter-demonstrators and people threatening to attack. Then you got up to the Capitol where they had this army to prevent us from touching the steps of the Capitol, because that's where what's his name, the [inaudible 00:16:08] president took his oath of office or — 

Milligan:

Jefferson Davis.

Hartford:

Davis. Yes. That was somehow some holy relic.

Milligan:

Yes.

Hartford:

That they had put down something, so that nobody could touch it. Anyway, sorry. Do you remember anything else? Anything else you want to say about the march to Montgomery and what happened in Montgomery?

Milligan:

It was an interesting point in history, a point that changed me. I was an anomaly among my peers. My classmates did not share the same civil rights passion that I had, and have. I've always been out of the box here in Montgomery. I was alone in that passion.

Friends of mine — I went to Hall Street Baptist Church and my church was a sister church of Dexter.

Hartford:

Holt Street or [inaudible 00:17:19]?

Milligan:

Hall, H-A-L-L. I was at Dexter a lot. One of my best friend's father was the chairman of the trustee board, so I was always down there and playing with Reverend King and with Yogi and stuff. When Mr. King died, I noticed they spell Yolanda's name, Y-O-K-I but we called her Yogi, or at least, I know that's what I remember saying as a child, not the K but the G.

I grew up down at Dexter and around the movement. My Sunbeam Band. — The girls Bible study group you might call it at my church, the leader of that was Mr. Johnny Carr. Mrs. Carr was president of the MIA, the first of the Montgomery Improvement Association. She was also Rosa Parks' very close friend. Mrs. Parks' church was three blocks from my house. I'm certain that I was in Mrs. Parks' presence with Mrs. Carr as a child with the Sunbeam Band.

I was always — I was around the movement. During the time when the bus boycotters came through and they were attacked at the Greyhound Bus Station.

Hartford:

The Freedom Riders.

Milligan:

[inaudible 00:18:31] at St. John — Held up at First Baptist Church, and they spent the night at the home of the pharmacist Richard — My, my, my, my. Huh. It'll come to me.

Anyway, I went to school with them. I grew up with them. Being around the movement is like part of my nature. I can't separate — It's like looking back at it in an out of body experience, me in that place in time, it was uniquely my experience, not shared with my peers and with my friends.

Hartford:

You mentioned — 

Milligan:

Harris. Richard Harris was the pharmacist that kept the SNCC people when they got out of the church. Richard Harris, the Harris house is where everybody stayed.

Hartford:

At the time of the Freedom Rides, we're talking about, which would be '61, the Freedom Rides would be, yes, '61.

Milligan:

'61. Yeah. '61.

Hartford:

Which would be six years after the Montgomery bus boycott, so you would have been around seven or eight or nine, were you in the church in First Baptist when it was surrounded?

Milligan:

I don't even remember that night. I was not in the church. That's another example of the difference between '55 and the movement in the '60s. I was not in the church and nobody that I knew was at that church that night. Heard about it. Knew everyone was at the Harris house but that wasn't in my framework, in my mind at that time. It was years later, when I was 13, in '65, that my activism was picked up.

Hartford:

You mentioned that on the Selma to Montgomery, the march from St. Jude's to the Capitol steps, was your first experience with relating with white people in a non-adversarial. Do you want to say anything more about that? [inaudible 00:21:10].

Milligan:

Yeah. It was just something just happened holding that man's hand. I can't — It was a mystical kind of experience, because Montgomery was totally segregated, so there was no question of interacting with white kids that play — I lived one block from Oak Park. When the law was passed requiring desegregation of public facilities, they put a fence around the park. The park had a swimming pool, they cemented the pool. A zoo was there. The animals were taken out of the park. I could not go in the park. The fence was put up. We were not allowed to go in the park.

I grew up with that level of segregation, that level of animus that you all are not human beings.

Hartford:

Total absolute segregation.

Milligan:

And you're going to live in your separate world.

Hartford:

Let me ask you another question. You're 13 years old. You're cutting school to participate in the march to Montgomery. At that time, a lot of people in the white press leveled the charge that Black children, who were participating in the movement — I mean, not just in Selma but the Birmingham — So many children were arrested in Birmingham, they called it the Children's Crusade.

The accusation was made that the civil rights movement, well, we like to call it the freedom movement, was just using children in a cynical way. They really didn't understand what they were doing. Could you talk about how you saw it as a child? And respond to that charge, that the children who were involved in the movement were being used as pawns.

Milligan:

Yeah. I've read that James Bevel was the mastermind behind the Birmingham march.

Hartford:

Right.

Milligan:

We'll talk about Bevel later and my story, because I can see him craftily planning that, and deliberately sacrificing the kids. I can see him having ulterior motives that were not — That discounted the children, for the children's sake.

But it was bigger than Bevel. In my naC/ve self, I wanted to make people's lives better. I couldn't understand poverty, I couldn't understand lack of food. I couldn't understand the disparities between the communities. I simply wanted to be a change agent, to make life better for people.

I didn't have a Marxist/Leninist analysis, a class analysis of what was going on, and I didn't know any critical race theory or none of that, I had no theory behind it, but I just was concerned about human beings.

In that sense — The other young people that I know who marched, we weren't concerned about that. We did not consider ourselves as being used. Bevel may have had that in mind, because it was a good tactic to get the press out for them to show us, because the laws changed when Birmingham was on the news. He made a wise tactical decision to have the press cover children being abused.

I didn't — I had no thought of anything ulterior, other than making life better for people. [inaudible 00:25:44].

Hartford:

You knew what you were doing and why you were doing it?

Milligan:

Mm-hmm. I knew what I was doing. It was a child-like simplicity but I knew what I was doing. I wasn't conned into doing anything.

Hartford:

You knew there were dangers?

Milligan:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Hartford:

Since you raised Bevel, and since we'll be doing a transcription of this, let's keep all the Bevel stuff together. You said you wanted to have some other comments about Bevel.

Milligan:

Yeah. In 1969, when I finished high school, I was offered scholarships to a lot of the PWIs, predominantly white institutions, white schools, colleges, especially on the east coast. One of my godmothers was librarian at Amherst. Her husband was the first Black professor, junior professor, at Amherst. He had taught at Stanford, and so all of my junior high years, I was either going to go to Stanford and then when they moved to Amherst, to Wellesley.

Reverend King was killed, and my militancy flared and so I did not want to go to a white school. I wanted to go to a predominantly Black institution that had a history of social justice activism, and so I was attracted to Fisk, to DuBois, and E. Franklin Frazier and later learned that my dear idol, Ida B. Wells, went there and so I intentionally accepted a scholarship to Fisk and went there in 1969.

That was — At the time, I was an Agnostic at that point. I had just gotten fed up with the hypocrisy in the church, and didn't believe in organized religion and I joke and say that the universe has a sense of humor, because my work study job was in the chaplain's office.

I'm in the chaplain's office. The chaplain was [inaudible 00:27:49] Taylor, who was a Black theologian. It was around — Cleage has just written his book, Black Theology and Black Power, and Cone had just written [inaudible 00:28:05].

Hartford:

Cleveland Sellers?

Milligan:

Uh-uh. Albert Cleage.

Hartford:

Oh, Albert Cleage.

Milligan:

C-L-E-A-G-E. Cleage. Cone had just written — Cone was the one that wrote Black Theology and Black Power. Cleage started the shrine to the Black Madonna. Reverend Taylor, the chaplain, brought Cone to Fisk, and so I met James Cone back in '69. I was around those theologians.

That was also during the time where there was — We were demonstrating for Black universities and for African American studies. At Fisk, already a Black university, we wanted an African American studies program. We had other demands.

Somehow, Bevel got on campus and I don't know who invited him. I don't know if Chaplain [inaudible 00:28:58] Taylor brought Bevel or how Bevel got there. But some kind of way, he wound up on campus and I was in a group of students, who took up his call for revolutionary overtaking of Fisk, and turning Fisk into a Black university, a Black institution.

Wound up — He was staying in an apartment, in a house off-campus, and some of my girlfriends and I wound up there one night, and went through his intimidation thing. He was not a good person. Went through his intimidation and his threats about sexual exploitation. He didn't harm me. He walked around with this stick, he had this African cane, and he would pound it and it had a hypnotic effect. I think at a point, we were literally hypnotized.

That next morning, I ran away. Several of us ran away and left one of our girlfriends there. The guys at Fisk, the guys in the movement, we all went down on campus and broke her out of the house.

That whole experience with him — Because I was 17 years old, 16, 17 or 18 years old, and so, I mean, a virgin. I had never been around men. Never been exposed to the male body. It was just a really traumatic — He made us undress. Because his whole thing was clothes were the barrier of the bourgeois, some blah, blah — All his bullshit. Excuse my French.

But anyway, he had his line back then. We were scared, terrified and went along until we could run away. It was years before I even told anybody about that experience. Nobody mentioned him. Even when I was in PWC, with Jim Forman and [inaudible 00:31:05], nobody mentioned Bevel.

I probably also didn't mention him, because I was embarrassed, I didn't understand what had gone on. Then when Dave Halberstam wrote The Children, he came to Montgomery and did a book signing and a presentation. When I read that book, it was the first time that I saw anybody criticize Bevel. That was an epiphany for me. I cried. I mean, I cried. It just — It opened up a well that I didn't even know was dug in my soul, so I went to the book signing and spoke with him afterwards, and thanked him and told him that I was one of those children that he wrote about, and how his writing about Bevel had blessed me, and I thanked him for doing that.

That was a special moment in my life, being in Dave's presence, and going through that epiphany around Bevel, because that brought some things into focus for me also. That was a challenging time in my life, those years. Yeah.

Hartford:

You are not alone in women who have had similar stories, like what you said, and I just wanted to reaffirm that.

Milligan:

Yeah. Yeah. I've read his daughter's story [inaudible 00:32:46] and what she went through was horrible, the daughter that has came forward, that came public. What she went through was horrible. Yeah. It's an interesting time.

Hartford:

Anyway, let's move on through [inaudible 00:33:02]. You mentioned that the assassination of Dr. King was a real turning point in your life. That was '68. You would have been — How old?

Milligan:

17.

Hartford:

17. Were you still in Montgomery at that time?

Milligan:

Mm-hmm. I was at a baseball game.

Hartford:

[inaudible 00:33:22].

Milligan:

We were at a basketball game at Alabama State College in the arena. It was announced over the speaker. A lull descended on that place. We were all just — It was unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I don't remember how I got home that night, but I remember my life being shattered, because I knew him as a person. You know? He would play with us and I have memories, childhood memories of this very kind man.

What I journaled, that I recently found, was if white America could do that to him, then how did I fit in the picture? It made me look at my life in terms of my being, dispensable. If they could kill Martin King, and all he wanted was good in the world, then what chance did I have? How did I see myself in this paradigm of America?

What I saw was a need for a more militant approach to change, a need for change that did not come from just the voting booth, but a need for a more militant response.

When I went to Fisk in '69, my major was sociology, though, because I thought that the problems that we were having needed to be fixed in the context of sociology, better jobs and stuff, and work on the Black family, that kind of thing.

My first sociology class, one of the points was the difference between a group and a crowd. I remember saying to myself, "Group and crowd ain't going to help solve Black liberation problems" and so at that moment, I changed my major from sociology to political science.

I said, "Okay, I'll affect change that way. I'll get in the system and affect change that way." My sophomore year, in my honors program, I met — We had a guest presenter, Ed Anderson. Ed was the first Black lobbyist for Common Cause. John Gardner had just left OEO and started Common Cause. Ed was the Black lobbyist, and Fisk had a January interim where we did independent study for the month of January, so Ed allowed me to come to Washington in January of '71 and shadow him.

I learned DC politics going behind this Black lobbyist, and so I was in Congressional offices, I was all over OEO. I was — Everywhere Ed Anderson went, Claire Milligan was there, this young kid from Alabama that was a student at Fisk.

While I was there, I learned about an internship program from Clark, Atlanta where the interns did research at Howard University's law school, and we did a research paper and during the week, we interned on the hill. We were allowed to apply to any Congress person or senator's office that we want to intern in, and so since I had decided I was going to change the life of Black America, and going to do it in politics, I decided I was going to go to the top of American politics.

I applied to interview in Senator Kennedy's office, to intern for Ted Kennedy. I was accepted. I was his first Black female intern. I reported to his first Black legislative aide, Bob Bates.

Hartford:

What year was this?

Milligan:

'71.

Hartford:

Okay.

Milligan:

The spring of '71. My job was to handle correspondence with constituents. When people came to Washington and they wanted to meet with the senator, I would arrange their meetings. If you've been on Congressional hearings, you know how the hearings are setup. If you've seen them on television, the staff people are lined behind the senators and the Congress people, and that's because the staffers would go to the hearings, because they were on so many committees, they couldn't be at every committee meeting.

The way that Senator Kennedy's office worked, and I'm sure all of them did, staff persons would go to the hearings and take notes and we would prepare working papers for the senator to read what happened at the meeting.

I would go to hearings with the senator and take notes for him, I'm representing Ted Kennedy. That was my first exposure to an automated signature machine, so I would sign his name writing people and I'm signing Ted Kennedy's name. It just was a time for me, 19 years old, 18 years old, at that point, doing this stuff in the name of Ted Kennedy. The whole thing was still surrounding him about Mary Jo and Chappaquiddick, so I was in the office sometimes fielding calls about that. He was very concerned about healthcare back then.

It was really, really a learning curve, a speeded up learning about America and how government worked. That was at the time of the Vietnam War protests and big demonstration on Capitol Hill. One day, I was going into the office and in my — The demonstrators were on the hill, so the Capitol police were out in full force. Here I am, this young child with my briefcase, a Capitol policeman took a tampon out of my briefcase and held it up, inspecting it. This was in '71.

I say that, because looking at January 6th of last year, my firsthand experience with the Capitol Police in a demonstration was with them challenging a tampon. Now this is in '71. I know full well that a Capitol police was much more able to handle the protests on January 6th from having had firsthand experience with them in '71. There had to have been a conspiracy. I mean, it's just — I deliberately haven't read the testimony and looked at the hearings and stuff but there was something to January 6th, because my experience with it in '71, was an entirely different Capitol Police. How many years is that? 40 years later or 50 years later? They can't respond to some demonstrators? Nah. Nah. Nah. They were well-able. They're going to look at my tampon, they were well-able to look at the stuff that those demonstrators had [inaudible 00:40:43].

Hartford:

Had they wished to do so.

Milligan:

Exactly. Exactly.

Hartford:

Yeah. Yeah. Amen to that.

Milligan:

[inaudible 00:40:50].

Hartford:

Let me fall back just a little bit. Let me do a little — Is it possible to change your background? Because you're flickering a lot.

Milligan:

Yeah.

Hartford:

It may be disorienting for people on the — 

Milligan:

I can do none.

Hartford:

That's more stable.

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

If that's all right with you.

Milligan:

Sure. Sure. Sure.

Hartford:

Let me just jump back, because I'm trying to keep this in order. Is there any thoughts you would share about the reaction to King's assassination by the other people in Montgomery?

Milligan:

Saddened. We were hurt. Our souls were hurt. The city of Montgomery mourned him. Mourns him. Yeah. Yeah. We lost a friend, a person, a human being, not just this civil rights star, not the Nobel Laureate, we lost a friend. We were sad.

Hartford:

Was there anything notable about the white reaction?

Milligan:

I wasn't around white people.

Hartford:

Okay.

Milligan:

I don't know. I don't know. Now I talk to my white friends now, and we have not talked about that and that's an interesting thing I'll ask them, specifically, how did that impact them? Yeah.

Hartford:

I know, for example, and they're not — They're, obviously, in some ways, totally different but when John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in '63, a friend of mine who was in a bank in Jackson, Mississippi, when the news came over, all the whites in the bank cheered and applauded.

Milligan:

Huh.

Hartford:

I was just — Anyway, that was where that question came from.

Milligan:

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there probably was some of that in '63. Yeah.

Hartford:

Going back — All right. '69, you started Fisk. '71, you're an intern at Senator Edward Kennedy — Now that was a summer job or a full-time job?

Milligan:

Spring semester.

Hartford:

Huh?

Milligan:

Spring semester internship. A spring semester internship.

Hartford:

I see, so it was part of your school studies, right?

Milligan:

Mm-hmm. The paper that I wrote, I did A Legislative History of the Family Assistance Plan, and FAP, the Family Assistance Plan is an income — A guaranteed income model, and this was in [inaudible 00:44:07]. Huh?

Hartford:

Did it get passed?

Milligan:

Mm-hmm. But nothing happened to it. Nothing happened. It didn't go anywhere.

Hartford:

Yeah. Yeah.

Milligan:

I remember in my — The militant me, and my preface, I quoted DuBois on power can seize nothing without demand. That was my statement to Ted Kennedy, because, at that point, I was so overwhelmed by what I thought was hypocrisy in the office, the Chappaquiddick stuff, my signing his name, people getting letters from him that they thought Senator Kennedy was writing and it was me writing them.

He kept — We would do these notes for him, about the hearings, and he kept everything in his briefcase and Bob Bates, the Kennedy Institute senator, has two oral histories of Bob's and Bob describes the briefcase in one of his oral histories. The senator would pack up everything at night and take the briefcase home, and so I never saw his active engagement [inaudible 00:45:20] with anybody, because I wasn't in his office. I'm in the suite but I wasn't in his office.

My sense of him was not — I wasn't all that impressed by him. I knew what they let little old me do, and I knew what we put in that bag. One day, he left his briefcase in the Senate chambers. They sent me to get it, and so I had to take the train, the underground train to go from the office building, [inaudible 00:45:47] office building to the Senate to get his briefcase.

Here I am, riding on the train with Ted Kennedy's briefcase, and I'm thinking — Back then, I told myself — Remember the book The Spook Who Sat By the Door?

Hartford:

Mm-hmm.

Milligan:

I was the spook. I was going to solve Black America's problems from Ted Kennedy's office. I'm riding on the train with his briefcase and the thought occurs to me, look in there, there's going to be some of the secrets of what they're planning on y'all. Go in there and look at that stuff, but I didn't open this briefcase. I just took it back to the office.

What I have learned, as an adult, the disdain that I had for him or the non- respect that I had for the senator has been replaced with I learned a lot from his management style, because he was smart enough to have a brilliant staff. He relied on his staff.

Even my notes, he read our notes. He had subject matter experts on his different areas. He had his healthcare expert and he had experts on his areas, and he relied on them. It wasn't a naC/ve ignorance, but he trusted them to do the research and he trusted them to give him the data.

Having that kind of management style where you retain good staff, where you compensate good staff, where you charge them and then let them do their job without micromanaging, is something that, as an adult and as a manager, I appreciate and I saw that firsthand with Ted Kennedy.

Hartford:

That's interesting. Very interesting.

Milligan:

He was not — I would not call him an [inaudible 00:47:43] but he was an organizer and a manager of people and a man of purpose and whatever he had his goals set on, he achieved that. You know? He went after his goals.

Hartford:

That's actually a very effective management style.

Milligan:

Absolutely. It absolutely is. It absolutely is. [inaudible 00:48:07] grown to appreciate it.

Hartford:

Did you ever have any personal interactions with him that you would like to share?

Milligan:

Well, one. He was an avid Irish Catholic. St. Patty's Day, there was a St. Patrick's Day party, and I'm this little militant, outspoken — I had just started studying Marxism with the Marxist study group. I was really, really out there. I'm at Ted Kennedy's St. Patrick's Day party with the green beer and stuff. He said something, and I said — I hope I wasn't this disrespectful but I had a smart mouth back then. I know I thought, I don't know if the words came out of my mouth but I know I looked at him, and I thought, "There's a lot of y'all's blood in me, but I don't think any of it is Irish."

Now I don't know if I said that to Ted Kennedy or not. I know I did think it, though, because I was not into his St. Patty's Day party at all. That was one of my Ted Kennedy moments.

Bob would work weekends and stuff, so one weekend, he had to take some work out to the senator's house in Maryland.

Hartford:

Bob is — Who is Bob?

Milligan:

Bob Bates was the legislative aide that I reported to. I remember riding out to the house one Saturday, and just the acreage and stuff. It was a nice house. I kind of remember — I don't know the intimacies about his relationship with his wife at that time, but the Chappaquiddick stuff was going on and all the rumors about him and womanizing and stuff, but I remember feeling happy for him when he divorced and when he married and was happy in his second marriage. I remember feeling personally happy for him, that he had that peace. I could — In some kind of way, I just had memories of his being happy then in that new marriage, as opposed to — Happiness isn't a word I would have associated with him during the time when I was in the office in '71.

Hartford:

Right.

Milligan:

But I remember being happy for him when he successfully divorced and remarried.

Hartford:

Let me go back — Just drop back to Fisk for a moment.

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

In one of the things you sent me, you mentioned Delta Sigma Theta, a sorority. Is that something that you had joined at Fisk or was that — 

Milligan:

No. I was absolutely opposed to sororities at Fisk. We thought that was just some more petty bourgeois, whatever, whatever, the words were we had for sororities and fraternities at that time.

What I did not know, my mother was president of the undergraduate chapter of Delta Sigma Theta here at Alabama State. I did not know that when I was growing up. My mother pledged during the time when everything was a secret, and you didn't talk about the sorority and sorority business. I didn't know about her involvement in the sorority.

When I moved back to Alabama, I left here in '69 and I moved back here in '89 to take care of my mother and my grandparents. One of my thoughts was to pledge, so that it could be a joint activity that my mother and I could share but her health never — It continued to decline, so I wasn't able to reactivate her and, therefore, I did not pledge at that time.

I did pledge in 1998, though, in honor of her. Delta Sigma Theta was the second Black national sorority. It was founded in 1913, January of 1913 at Howard University, an offshoot of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. They were the first Black sorority. But the women, the 22 women who started Delta were social justice activists, and they were concerned about women's rights, and voting rights. In fact, they participated, the women in that chapter participated in the Women's March in DC. The sorority has always had [inaudible 00:52:46].

Hartford:

The one in recent times?

Milligan:

Huh? The first one, the one back in 1913.

Hartford:

Yes. Okay. Okay.

Milligan:

That one, the first one.

Hartford:

All right. I was confused [inaudible 00:52:58].

Milligan:

That was segregated. They were required to march separately and the Black women weren't allowed to mingle. Ida B. Wells was there with a delegation of Chicago suffragettes. They didn't want her — They wanted her to get in the back and she broke away from the back and went up to the front of the line and marched with the white women.

My sorority has a history of activism, and so when I pledged in '98, it was solely out of an emotional response and a tie to be with my mother. I've since then reactivated, because I'm — To be able to participate in the organization's justice activities, and its mental health thrust.

Back in the '60s, no, I was absolutely opposed to sororities.

Hartford:

Yes. When I was in college — When I was a college radical, sororities, fraternities, totally bourgeois. You know, as I work in the civil rights movement archive, we're beginning to uncover some secret stuff that was never part of public life but of things that were done behind the scenes, so I was curious about that.

Anyway, let's go back to Fisk.

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

Anything more you want to say or comment on?

Milligan:

Fisk was a really important part of my life. It's a phenomenal institution. I have a five year old granddaughter that I bought a Fisk t-shirt last year for her birthday, and my son wrapped her in it and she did a rap dance to it, and didn't know what Fisk was but I'm concerned about advocating for Black scholars to attend our HBCUs. Fisk is a very good school.

I got a small class size, student/teacher ratio very small. My honors English instructor was Susan Wiltshire, who left Fisk maybe two years after I left there, so she maybe left in '73, and went to Vanderbilt. She retired as the chairman emeritus of their classics department. She's a Greek scholar. Susan's presence on campus is an example of their intent to retain good faculty. Fisk has always been committed to that.

I have wonderful friendships. My class was enrolled in September of '69. My class graduated class of '73. Even though, I left Fisk after I left Senator Kennedy's office, I didn't graduate with that class, I'm an active alum in that class. I'm very, very much committed to promoting Fisk.

Hartford:

Why didn't you go back to Fisk and what [inaudible 00:56:23]?

Milligan:

When I was in Senator Kennedy's office and I somehow got introduced to that Marxist study group, and it just hit me that what I was doing daily was not going to effectively change people's lives, that political process through legislation on Capitol Hill, and studying Marxism, my whole perspective about politics changed.

When I went back to Nashville, in the fall of '71, I enrolled — I was enrolled in three classes at Fisk and I took an economics class, economics of Marxism at Vanderbilt but in some kind of way, I got involved in a prison rights movement in Nashville. I don't remember how but Jim Forman and BWC was active in that movement.

Hartford:

BWC is?

Milligan:

Black Workers Congress. Jim started BWC after SNCC imploded. He worked with men in Detroit, auto industry at DRWM, the Detroit Revolutionary Workers Movement. Then they started BWC.

Hartford:

Do you want to get a drink of water or something?

Milligan:

Yeah.

Hartford:

We can take a break if you want.

Milligan:

Yeah. Let's take a — Yeah. Let's take a break. [inaudible 00:57:56].

Hartford:

I will see if I can figure out how to stop the recording.

[BREAK]

Bruce Hartford:

Okay. You there?

Claire Milligan:

Uh-huh, it says I'm muted. Am I?

Hartford:

I don't see you as muted, I hear you.

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

Is your little — 

Milligan:

It's gone now.

Hartford:

It's gone now, okay. All right, so you were taking a class at Vanderbilt, which is involved in Marxism, but then you were in a Marxist study group, which I assumed was [inaudible 00:00:36].

Milligan:

I was in the study group in DC, when I was at Howard and working in Senator Kennedy's office, I was in a study group in DC. And then when I went to back to college, that fall, I enrolled in a class in Marxism —

Hartford:

I see.

Milligan:

— at Vanderbilt.

Hartford:

Is there anything you want to say about that Marxist study group?

Milligan:

That was another one of those moments in my life, a point of change, because my whole philosophy, particularly on the question of historical materialism and negating spirit, we were touting Chairman Mao, "Religion is an opiate of the people." And so it was a complete philosophical switch for me to leave that spirit realm, that realm of thinking about spirit.

But it made sense to me, the whole aspect of class struggle, the dialectics made sense to me. Because of the activity with the prison — I found my notes. One of Jim's books, Criticism and Self-Criticism: 20 Enemy Forces, we used to have these meetings where we would have to talk about what our petty bourgeois influences were that were impacting our role with the proletariat stuff, so I found that.

Hartford:

We used to call that class stand struggle.

Milligan:

Okay. Okay.

Hartford:

So I'm just saying, been there, done that. Got t-shirt.

Milligan:

Yes. Yes. And the hat.

I found my notes from one of those meetings. It's just amazing the stuff you go through. Anyhow, I got wound up with them. And so by the end of that fall semester, I quit school, and moved to Atlanta. And my partner at that time was Rick Reed, who was like Jim Forman's, number two man with BWC. And so there I was in Atlanta, in January of '72 with BWC, looking for a job. I was organizing workers. So I had a job as a baler in a cotton gin. And the baler was — Huh?

Hartford:

Hold on. I just want to clarify for the record here, and just see if we're on — in terms of terminology, back in my day and in my experience, when we said Marxist study group, we were referring to Marxism from a Leninist or Maoist or a communist point of view, as opposed to Democratic Social Democrats.

Milligan:

Correct.

Hartford:

Okay. So —

Milligan:

Correct.

Hartford:

— you're returning to —

Milligan:

I was reading Das Kapital. I was reading real Marx.

Hartford:

Real Marx, real Lenin, real Mao. Okay, so you're in Atlanta. And so at least in my experience, one of the imperatives of those study groups is that you go join the proletariat by getting a blue collar or a service job or something.

Milligan:

Yes.

Hartford:

And so you're a baler in a cotton gin, which is — You were explaining what a baler does.

Milligan:

And it wasn't a baler, it was a spooler. Okay. When the cotton was taken from the bowl of cotton itself, the machines made it into thread. And that thread was wrapped around spools that then went to form the basis for fabric being made. And so I ran the machine that put the thread on the spools, and there was always dust from the cotton.

Hartford:

Mm-hmm, white lung.

Milligan:

So one of our organizing tools was the health concerns about cotton dust in the lungs. I didn't keep that job long, because it was too hard. I wasn't that much of a proletariat, so didn't stay that long. But that was one of my attempts to become immersed among the working masses of people. Another effort of mine, Maynard Jackson was running for mayor, and so Jim tried to plant me in Maynard's office, I was going to be a secretary. And I didn't pass that, some kind of way, they smelled a fraud. And so I didn't pass that. I didn't get to work for Maynard, but I did get a job at a Western Electric factory driving a forklift. I was the first woman, forklift driver in that factory. They made the cables for underground telephone lines. You've seen the huge —

Hartford:

Right.

Milligan:

— spools of — Okay. So the cable was made there, the different colored threads. They would be wrapped up and then they would form larger pieces of cable, individual cables wrapped into one. And I drove a forklift. I would go around to every station in the factory getting the scraps in the forklift buckets things, and drive them into the rail cars where they would be driven off for recycling. So my job, and I was a union rep, that was my plan. I was the union rep.

Hartford:

Which union?

Milligan:

And so my job was to find advanced workers to recruit proletariat to the cause of the working class. And I met a man who knew how to say what I needed to hear to make me think he was actually an advanced worker, a member of the proletariat, when in fact he was a lumping proletariat.

Hartford:

And explain what that is.

Milligan:

He was an abusive person. He was a thug, a gangster. And his boss was from Montgomery. And we knew the same people. So in my rounds around his area, I always talked to his boss. And he had in his mind that I was having an affair with him. And so he beat him, lured him in the restroom one night, and beat him, broke his nose. And expected me, as his union steward, to get his job back, which I did not do. And what I did do was I determined that if he hit me again, I was a victim of abuse. And so I had decided if he hit me again, that I was going to kill him. So one night in January of '72, I decided that was the night that I was going to kill him.

He had done stuff, like he was very maniacal and our phones were all bugged, and we were at a meeting at the office one day and he called over there and said he was on his way to kill us all, going to blow us all up, because he knew I was in there having affairs with the men. And he's on his way to kill us all. And we look out the door and the FBI is parked right across the street, and you could see their rifles aimed at us, because this maniac, they done heard him say, he's coming to kill us. So they are parked across the street. He didn't come, which was a good thing. But that one example of the close calls that I've had. The men in the group had decided that they were going to handle him.

But the night that I was going to kill him, and I was an atheist at that point, I looked under the cabinet to get rat, to put rat poison in his food and kill him, and I heard something say, "Don't do it. It's not worth it. Leave." Literally those words, "It's not worth it. Leave." Because I knew, I was terrified of leaving him. Because my afro was longer, he had pulled my head to his lap once and put the gun in my head and said, "If you do this, blah, I'll blow your brains — " All that. My fears for of him were real, wasn't based on any thinking, what he might do.

But that particular night I decided, "Okay, I will leave." And so I threw my stuff in my car and I remember looking up at the sky saying, "If you're up there, get me away from this man." I didn't have any money. I wrote my sister a check for $5, and I had my Exxon credit card, and I left Atlanta, Georgia headed to Los Angeles. I was going to go, I'd have made arrangements to stay with a college friend that I had not seen since 1969, in LA. Because I figured if I got the continent between us, that would improve my chances of his not finding me.

So that night in January, I left Atlanta, spent the night in Montgomery. I did not tell my mother and grandparents where I was going, because I knew that he was going to come to find me. And I didn't want them in an awkward position of saying, "We don't know where she is," because I didn't know how he would react. And so I deliberately didn't tell them where I was. So all they knew that I was leaving him. They knew that I was not happy in the marriage. Because we had another incident where my, I came home once and my grandmother said, "What's wrong? Because I've been dreaming." And he had been beating me, and she dreamed about it.

And so she said, "Well, he has to go." So we put him out. But I went back to him because I was afraid he would turn us over to the FBI. And that was really my fear of him killing me, but also I had a fear of his turning us in. Because I was the secretary of the group and I had all the records and stuff, and he knew where they were. But that night that I left him, I called on something that I didn't know I had inside. And I drove from Atlanta to Montgomery. I spent the night in Montgomery, and then from Montgomery to Houston, and got to Houston and never left Houston.

Wasn't meant to leave Houston, because that's where I went through a really traumatic time. I went through a spiritual evolution. Because when I left Atlanta, an atheist, but calling on spirit that I didn't know existed to help me get away from this man who was going to kill me, I was at a very low point, because I was very afraid of him. I did not find out until June, shortly after June of 2021 that he did come to Montgomery. And he was threatening to my mother and grandparents. I found a letter that he wrote them in April of '72. I had left him in January of '72. And I found his April letter, where he came over here looking for me, and told them that if something happened to me, it wouldn't be because he did it. "Y'all are acting like I was going to hurt Claire, blah, dah, dah, dah."

So I spent some time in real, literal fear of my life when I first moved to Houston. And a friend of mine, a woman that I met, when I finally got a job at the University of Houston, gave me a book by a theosophist, Alice Bailey. The title of the book was From Intellect to Intuition. And something in that book made me think maybe there is a God. I did not want to have anything to do with organized religion, but something in Alice Bailey's book made me think maybe there's God. And so I started studying other religions, and I settled on Hatha and Raja yoga. And then I started reading the Vedanta.

And I found a book, The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta. And in that book, it's literally a parallel, the sermons on one page, Vedanta's on the other, the teaching is the same. And so I had been praying for a guru to help me with my yoga, and never got a guru. And so I said, "Well, since the sermon and Vedanta are so similar, then I'll just read the Bible." But I would only read the gospels. I didn't want to read anything that Paul wrote, because I thought and still think he was a misogynist. And I didn't understand all that murdering stuff in the Old Testament, so I didn't find any relevance to anything other than what was in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the gospels, as Jesus' words were recorded.

So I had an epiphany of sorts and went back to the Baptist Church. When I was in college, I wound up majoring in economics and I wanted to work in African economic development for a period of time, that was what I wanted to do career wise, before I went in the movement. And one of my mentors was one of the first Black ambassadors, Sam Adams. Sam was Ambassador to Mali and the Cameroon and somewhere else. Phenomenal man, brilliant, he was on the World Affairs Council, just a brilliant man. And Houston was his home. And he happened to move back to retire from the State Department and move to Houston. And he told me about a church in Houston where the young people were social activists. And so he said, "You might enjoy those young people, because they're really active in the community." And so I started going to Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, Bill Lawson was the pastor, the founding pastor.

Hartford:

Reber Avenue.

Milligan:

Huh?

Hartford:

What was the name?

Milligan:

Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston.

Hartford:

Oh, Weaver.

Milligan:

Wheeler.

Hartford:

Wheeler.

Milligan:

W-H-E-E-L-E-R, Wheeler.

Hartford:

Since I've interrupted you already —

Milligan:

Sure.

Hartford:

— I had a follow-up question.

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

And that is, so you had married this guy that you met in the —

Milligan:

Western Electric.

Hartford:

What?

Milligan:

In the Western Electric factory.

Hartford:

In the Western Electric factory, and he is abusive and threatening. Could you not get any help from the Black Workers' Congress group you were a part of?

Milligan:

Yeah, they were going to kill him. You can edit this out if you want to. He was going to [inaudible 00:16:36] —

Hartford:

But yes, okay, so they would at least have stood by you on — Okay. All right.

Milligan:

Yeah, they were. Yeah.

Hartford:

Okay. So I just wanted to make — So continue on, you're talking about your religious journey, and you've gone to Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church.

Milligan:

Reverend Lawson had been the man who started Wheeler. Was —

Hartford:

Jim or James?

Milligan:

— over the student union — Huh?

Hartford:

Jim or James?

Milligan:

His name was William A. Lawson. Bill —

Hartford:

Oh, okay.

Milligan:

— Lawson was his — Not James. Not Charles James, uh-huh, mm- hmm, William A. But he was a Houston activist and over the Black Student Union at Texas Southern University. And so the church had, and still does have very much a social justice presence in the city of Houston. So I did a lot of teaching Sunday school, and I was in the choir. And I went on mission and mercy groups, trips helping people throughout the city of — I was very active in the church, and found peace from the actual trauma that I went through as an abused wife.

I said, then, and I still am an advocate for women who are in abuse relationships to leave. I tell women, "If he hit you one time, he'll hit you again. And so leave. If he wants to change, he has to initiate that change in his behavior, but not at your expense of waiting on him to do better."

Hartford:

And hoping.

Milligan:

The whole psychology of being an abused woman is a whole other chapter, is a whole, real part of my story. Yeah, that's a real part of the journey.

Hartford:

So you go to Houston, and at some point you mentioned that you — All right, hold on, I'm having trouble here with my notes. So pick up, you're in Houston, continue on from there.

Milligan:

I love jazz. I've always loved jazz. And when I left Atlanta, my plan was to tell people that my name was Naima, Coltrane's first wife. Her name was Juanita Naima, because I knew that he was going to try and find me. And so I didn't want anybody lying to him. So I knew that he would call and say, "Where's Claire?" I wanted people to legitimately be able to say, "I don't know who Claire is." But I forgot to tell people my name was Naima, so I was Claire in Houston. But I listened to jazz every night. And the program that I listened to, the DJ was the man that I married, Bill Milligan. I met him listening to him every night. He had a show 11:00 to 12:00 at night in Houston. And that's how I met the man that —

Hartford:

And he was the DJ? He was the —

Milligan:

Mm-hmm. And so we married in '78. I'm an only child and we'll have to go back to that whole story about my father, the sperm donor. But I've always loved children. I always wanted to have a big family. But I had trouble conceiving and went through fertility workup. And my tubes are 100% bilaterally blocked. There's no opening in my fallopian tubes. And it would've required surgical reconstruction to open up my tubes. But the likelihood is that scar tissue would've formed over them. And so I still would not have an avenue for fertilized eggs to travel to my uterus.

But at that time, I was childlike in my faith. And I knew that God knew that I wanted children, and I knew that adoption was an alternative, but I knew that I wanted to bear children. And so in '79, I literally prayed for a baby. And there were three scriptures that I believed. And I would recite those scriptures every day. I worked at a bank at that time, and I would go to the Christian Science Reading Room across the street from the bank every day at lunch, and read these scriptures.

And I conceived. And then in April of '80, my water broke. And I couldn't understand that, because my doctor, my gynecologist was a man who happened to be Jewish, who admitted that the conception was a miracle, because my tubes are blocked. So I couldn't understand how could I have a miracle, and lose the baby. So we're driving to the emergency room, to the hospital, this afternoon in April of '80. And I was on the backseat of the car. And I looked up looking for goodness and mercy, because I had been taught that goodness and mercy were angels. And when the Bible said, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life," I was looking for goodness in mercy, because I knew they hadn't abandoned me. And I got this miracle baby, and now I'm threatening to lose the baby.

Well, I did miscarry. And so that was a traumatic time. Losing a baby is horrible for a woman anyway. But a child that was documented medical miracle, how could that happen? And so for three months, from April to July of '80, I was a basket case, because I couldn't understand it. And then in July, through a series of miracle things with me and God, I knew that I had to stop that grieving unto death place that I was in. And I had to get over that. I never got an answer to the question, why me? The only answer that I got was, "Why not you? Women lose babies all over the world all the time, every day. Hundreds an hour. So why do you think it couldn't happen to you?"

And what did happen, I developed and still have a sensitivity to grieving women. And so just like I'm sensitive to women who have been in abused relationships from my own lived experience, I have a sensitivity to women who have miscarried. And so for years, I joke and say, "I can smell a woman who's lost a baby. I can smell a grieving woman." But my passion for people was directed that way. That was in July of '80, we conceived, in April of '80, three weeks early, my son Evan was born. My present son, Evan. The first boy baby in April of '80, was a male child that we named Evan. My mother's name is Eva, and I added an N to her name. And his name is Evan.

So in April of '80, we had who I termed Evan one. And I tease my son and say, "We weren't ready for you because you left us in '80 and then came back a year later in April of '81. So what did we do to convince you that we were ready to be parents?" Now he hasn't answered that yet. I think sometimes he says, "You really still ain't ready, but that's 40 years ago." But I have Evan two. And so I have that whole miracle of his life is a key part of my journey, also in.

I'm an only child. My mother's health was bad all of her life. I think some of that was some grieving around my father, and how poorly he treated her. When they conceived me, they were not married. My grandmother forced them to get married. And I don't think my mother ever really recovered from the trauma of conceiving a child out of wedlock. And my father was 100% non-responsive to her and to me. Last summer, I found the letters that my first husband wrote to them. I also found letters that my father wrote to my mother, a letter that he wrote. I talked to him twice, maybe three times, or twice, I remember on the telephone, but have not seen him.

One thing, and this goes back to when you asked my name, he told me that he named me, my name is Claire Patrese. He said that, "You never let anybody call you Clara, because your name is Claire. And your middle name is feminine form of the French word for Patricia, Patrese spelled E-S-E." And he reminded me that Patrese Lumumba's name is P-A-T-R-E-S-E, I mean, P-A-T-R-I-C-E. I-C-E is a masculine form of the spelling, but my name is Claire Patrese. And so I'm never going to let anybody call me anything other than that or spell it any other way. So he gave me not just sperm, but gave me my name.

My father was a con artist, brilliant man. And he literally conned my mother. And why the universe used him to bring me to the Earth, I don't know. But he is how I got here. But he was a brilliant man. And so I got his intelligence.

Hartford:

Surely that.

Milligan:

Hopefully, I'm using it a little bit better than he did, conning people. But the third thing that I got is his mother, my grandmother, Grandma Still, who was a wonderful soul. She was a touchy-feely person. And I hadn't grown up with the overt display of affection. Are you familiar with the concept post traumatic slave syndrome?

Hartford:

No.

Milligan:

The idea is that as a people, we inherited behaviors that we had to adapt to survive slavery morphed over time and have genetic impact. One of those behaviors is a tendency that enslaved mothers had to not bond emotionally with their babies, because they knew the children would literally be taken from their breasts and sold. So to avoid the pain of losing a child, it was not uncommon for enslaved mothers to not emote and to not touch and hug. And that emotional distancing is one of the impacts of post traumatic slave syndrome.

It is not uncommon for Black mothers to not be emotional, to not show emotion and show love, saying it, touching it, touching and saying it. The enslaved mother's posture for her children was one of defense and protection and caregiving, but not caring, but not showing the caring. And so I grew up with that. My maternal grandmother is descendant of slaves in Lowndes County, Alabama. And so her whole approach to my life was, once she got over the shock of her daughter having this illegitimate child, my grandmother and grandfather loved me to death. But there was a period before my parents married that I'm sure my grandmother was challenged by this unwanted grandchild.

Hartford:

Just one sec, post traumatic slavery syndrome.

Milligan:

Post traumatic slave syndrome.

Hartford:

That's a very interesting concept. I've never seen — Who writes about that? Did you —

Milligan:

Joy DeGreaux. There's a woman, Joy DeGreaux, I'll send you some links. But if you Google it, you'll find tons of stuff.

Hartford:

Okay, but that's very —

Milligan:

One author's name that comes to my mind right now is Joy DeGreaux, D-E and then G-R-E-A-U-X or something like that. But I'll send you some stuff. [inaudible 00:30:52] —

Hartford:

Send me some links, we'll insert it into the transcript. Oh, okay. In case people want to know more about it.

Milligan:

I will. I will. Yeah, it's —

Hartford:

I think that's — Yeah, I hadn't heard that. That was — Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but —

Milligan:

No, no, you should interrupt. Interrupt. No, no. [inaudible 00:31:11] —

Hartford:

By the way, as a personal aside, my mom's name is Claire.

Milligan:

Really?

Hartford:

Yeah.

Milligan:

Oh, good.

Hartford:

And I don't know —

Milligan:

How's she spell it?

Hartford:

Just the same way you spell it.

Milligan:

Really?

Hartford:

C-L-A-I-R-E.

Milligan:

I have an I in mine.

Hartford:

Yes. C-L-A-I-R — It's the regular way. It's the same Claire. And she was just like you. She was a feisty, revolutionary organizing — Not so good as a mom. But I admired her, though I didn't always like her.

Milligan:

Yeah. And I think my son will say the same thing.

Hartford:

Interesting. Anyway, I have a book, if you ever want to read it. You read my book, because she's in there.

Milligan:

Which one of your books?

Hartford:

It's called Troublemaker: Memories of the Freedom Movement. And she tells a story. She won a union negotiation, because she was so pregnant with me that the boss was afraid she'd go into labor right there in the negotiating room. So, anyway, let me ask, we're coming up on two hours now —

Milligan:

Huh.

Hartford:

— time flies.

Milligan:

Yes.

Hartford:

From what you've said, I have several general questions I'd like to ask.

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

But we're only up to a certain period of your life, how would you like to proceed?

Milligan:

If you're comfortable with stopping, I'd like to stop. Tell me, if you want to summarize what your general questions are now, and then we pick up from '80 something. So how you —

Hartford:

All right, well, let me just get your initial — Well, actually, if you give a response, that'll be the response. But let me do a couple of them. You mentioned the point that when you were in Montgomery as a high school student and you were active and into the movement, you were pretty much alone among your peers. Is that a correct summary? That it —

Milligan:

If we define my peers as my class of '31 —

Hartford:

Yes.

Milligan:

— high school, yes, I was alone among them.

Hartford:

And that replicates what almost everybody in the movement has said.

Milligan:

Huh. Hmm.

Hartford:

That there's this old joke, I don't know the exact way it goes, but something about a few years after the end of the second World War, if you went to France, everybody you met had been a member of the resistance, but ain't hardly none of them actually in the — And there seems to be a cultural belief among young students today that every Black person in the '60s was a Freedom Movement activist. Yet, activists, people who we know in the movement from SNCC and CORE and SELC and NAA Youth Groups, were always an isolated minority. Do you have any thoughts or comments on that?

Milligan:

Nope.

Hartford:

All right.

Milligan:

One of those things that the universe does, I don't —

Hartford:

That the ratio of people who are active participants in social movements is always a very small segment of the population. And as an organizer, that's something that organizers have to take into account. All right, well, one of the things that is not talked about very much in discussions in oral histories and so forth of the Freedom Movement, Brown versus Board of Education, all the struggles to end dual school systems and segregation were seen as important milestones on Freedom Road. But what were the effects on Black teachers?

Milligan:

Oh, okay. My mother, grandmother, and my aunts were all teachers. And my mother taught in a two-room schoolhouse. She taught first through third grade. And the principal taught fourth through sixth grade. It was one house with a dividing hall and the one class on one side and the other class on the other side, it had an outhouse. And whenever my school was out on vacation, because I went to the school at the college, "private school," my holidays were different from the regular public school days, and so I would be out of school some of the days and would go to my mother's school with her. And I was like the pet of the class. They were babysitting the teacher's daughter.

And I can remember being afraid to go to the outhouse to use the pot, because I thought a snake was going to bite me, because I had to choose the pot outside.

Hartford:

Yes.

Milligan:

But very, very primitive. The stuff that you see on television, the newsreels about the condition in the rural schools and stuff was very real. Secondhand school books, all that. But the dedication of the teachers was phenomenal. And so I grew up in an era of segregated schools, but dedicated teachers, and integration ripped through that part of our community. And so the best Black teachers were put into white schools.

Hartford:

Best is defined how?

Milligan:

Most effective educators, the ones who taught rather than babysit. And so even though we had integration, integration did not necessarily mean a better quality of education. It should have meant access to better things, textbooks, for example. But in terms of the quality of education and the things that we're taught, our school teachers were more than academicians, they taught us life and taught us survival.

Hartford:

In the Black schools, in the colored schools.

Milligan:

In the Black schools, yes. We were taught survival skills. We were taught kindness and courtesies, things that were not part of the integrated education system. So while we had exposure, technically had access to better things, the quality of education did not necessarily improve with integration. And in some quarters, there's a speculation that our lives were harmed by it. That there's aspects of integration in the educational system that were more detrimental than positive.

Hartford:

After they finally actually integrated the schools, in a lot of southern communities, the public schools run by the white administrators and with predominantly white teachers became almost entirely Black schools in terms of the student body. Because the white students were subsidized to go to private white academies. Was that the case in Montgomery? I know it was the case in Selma.

Milligan:

Mm-hmm. We still have the academies. Two of them are around the corner near my neighborhood. One recently changed the predominance of the word academy in its name on its marquee, which I thought was interesting, because they are aware of the stigma. They know the history, why those academies exist. Everywhere started them. And this one particular school, de-emphasized academy in its name. So, yeah, that's [inaudible 00:40:57] —

Hartford:

Does it admit Black children?

Milligan:

Huh?

Hartford:

Are there Black students that go to —

Milligan:

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Hartford:

Because in the decades, immediately after they were all white.

Milligan:

Right. They're integrated now. They're still predominantly white institutions, but they are integrated, faculty, staff, and students.

Hartford:

Okay. Any other thoughts on school integration, desegregation, education? I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired. Two hours on —

Milligan:

Yes.

Hartford:

— Zoom is about —

Milligan:

Yes, that's enough.

Hartford:

— my limit.

Milligan:

We can stop. We can stop.

Hartford:

All right, well, one more question —

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

— I wanted to pose to you, and this is a question as an activist, as an organized. One time, there was a SNCC guy, whose name is, it's on the tip of my brain and I can't call it, but I know exactly who it was. And a student asked him, he says, "Well, how did you guys — " Well, no,` it wasn't a student. He was talking with a young activist or somebody. Anyway, the question was, "How did you guys figure out what to do? How did you know what to do?" And his answer was, "It was like jumping off a cliff and learning to fly on your way down."

Other times, however, when we talk to young activists, and I'm saying we, because I do this, but a lot of other former activists who talk to young people, do this, emphasize the importance of research, analysis, strategic planning, tactical planning, thinking, discussing, debating meetings, in contradiction to post something on Facebook, and you have a movement. Yet, jumping on the cliff and learning to fly on the way down and the emphasis on strategy planning, they're totally contradictory. What are your thoughts as an organizer, as an activist?

Milligan:

I'm going to explore the statement that they are totally contradictory, because I'm going to throw out that perhaps they're yin and yang, perhaps we jumped off the cliff, while we were planning. Because there's some stuff that I have organized that it was divine inspiration, period. I couldn't have planned it. One of my jobs was over undergraduate counseling in the School of Sociology at the University of Houston. And I organized the first convocation rather than having just the mass university ride baccalaureate. I had a college of social sciences convocation that morning, separately, from the rest of the university's stuff.

And ideas came to me like having three by five cards with the person's name on it to give the — this is in 70 something, this was not being done when I did it. And organizing that I did for people with AIDS. I look at stuff that I've written and I said, "Huh? Was I thinking that back then? Was my mind really, really, really going that far?" So I think that I absolutely endorse the planning and strategy and necessity for that for research. I'm a researcher at heart. And so I believe in that.

I think you have to be open for what I call the, nevertheless for the I'm going to do all of this, and then I may not get the outcome that I'm anticipating, but I will work with what that outcome is and work that for good as well. The whole notion that it's interesting that we're using the words activist and organizer, because I read an article that Mike Miller wrote a couple of years ago, and Mike talked about that. And it's helped me to put my life, at 71 years old, in perspective, because I have decided that I have put up the hat of Claire the organizer, that just the organizer is on sabbatical. I will retain what I cannot get rid of. And that's the activism. I'm going to be an activist, period. That's my gut. But I don't have a desire or the ability or a need to organize things anymore. It's up to the young people.

And so I'll write stuff and research stuff and then send it and say, "Now what are y'all going to do about this? Here's X, Y, Z, here's why something needs to be done. What needs to be done? Now what are you going to do? Because I'm too old to do it." So except distinguishing myself from Claire the organizer versus Claire the activist, is a point in time for me. That's a seminal point in time for me now.

Hartford:

That's an important distinction.

Milligan:

It's very important. It's very important. Because I literally say to myself, "You can't organize that Claire, because you got your grandchildren. You can't do it. You have to sleep. The whole notion that you only needed three hours sleep is not true. You got along on three hours sleep, but ain't what you need. You need your eight hours, kiddo."

Hartford:

But there's a flip side to that, the distinction between organizer and activists, and, at least my feeling is, that far too many young people don't understand the distinction between activists —

Milligan:

Exactly.

Hartford:

— and organizer.

Milligan:

Exactly.

Hartford:

And they just go and be activists and then wonder why ain't anything organized?

Milligan:

Exactly. Exactly. And so I'm intentionally throwing those words in my conversations with them now. My son is an organizer.

Hartford:

Evan two.

Milligan:

Uh-huh, Evan two, and he appreciates that distinction. But a lot of them, but he does.

Hartford:

Don't even realize there's a distinction.

Milligan:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, to me, that's a fundamental point, because there is so much horrible stuff in the world that — I literally don't turn on my computer every day, because I'm bound to read something that I'm going to say, "Oh, we need to do something about that." And my next move is who's on what subcommittee in Congress? Who's the staffer? Because from working in Senator Kennedy's office, I know that it's the staffers that are important. The representatives themselves really ain't that much, it's who's the staff person.

And so my instinct a lot of times when I read something that's happening, I'll say, "I need to find who that staffer is and call that person." And I don't do that anymore. I'll make a note about it. And I'll send one of the young, I call them the young people an email and say, "Y'all really need to look into this." [inaudible 00:49:28] —

Hartford:

And how do they respond to that?

Milligan:

They ignore me, to their peril, to their peril.

Hartford:

Amen. So looking back on it, as clearly you've been an activist all your life, I still use the phrase social justice warrior as a positive compliment rather —

Milligan:

Yes.

Hartford:

— than a pejorative.

Milligan:

Yes.

Hartford:

How do you assess that, your life?

Milligan:

It's interesting. My journey — And we probably want Don't want to do that now, that's a —

Hartford:

Okay.

Milligan:

Let's pick that up.

Hartford:

Fair enough.

Milligan:

Let's start with that.

Hartford:

Fair enough.

Milligan:

Well, see, we haven't even talked about surviving suicide. We haven't talked about abolish capital punishment. We haven't talked about a lot of stuff.

Hartford:

You know, little stuff.

Milligan:

Yeah, exactly.

Hartford:

All right.

Milligan:

My grandchildren. My husband's death. My whole thing about a soulmate and companionship, whole lot of stuff we haven't even talked about.

Hartford:

All right.

Milligan:

I'll throw out my companionship thing. I'm enamored by love stories. And when I was in Atlanta in '72 to '75, Vincent Harding had the Institute of Black World, IBW. And I remember Vincent from those days. And in 2005, I was active in the Episcopal churches. Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage. You know Jonathan was [inaudible 00:51:25] —

Hartford:

Yeah, sure. I was Jonathan Daniel's roommate in Selma.

Milligan:

You were?

Hartford:

Yeah. We both stayed at the West House.

Milligan:

With Gloria.

Hartford:

I slept on the top of the washing machine dryer.

Milligan:

Washing machine.

Hartford:

What's that?

Milligan:

Okay. Well, then Gloria then?

Hartford:

Gloria?

Milligan:

Gloria Larry.

Hartford:

Sure.

Milligan:

Gloria stayed there too.

Hartford:

Well, I don't know her well, but I mean I'd met her.

Milligan:

Well, Gloria's a dear friend of mine. Yeah. We talk about those days.

Hartford:

She probably won't remember me, because there was —

Milligan:

She [inaudible 00:51:55] —

Hartford:

— half a dozen activists staying at the West House.

Milligan:

She'll remember.

Hartford:

Beville and Diane were staying upstairs, and Jonathan was there. This was in March of —

Milligan:

'65.

Hartford:

— '65. Anyway, I'm sorry I interrupted you. Jonathan —

Milligan:

No.

Hartford:

Yeah. And they do a thing to Selma every year. I mean, to Lowndes County every year.

Milligan:

Mm-hmm. Well, Vincent was there in 2005. And so 2005 was a good year for me, a whole lot of good stuff happened during that year. And so after the march, we're standing around and I looked at him and I said, "You remind me of somebody. Do they do the initials IBW mean anything to you?" I said, "Because you remind me of Vincent." He said, "I am Vincent Harding." It was just an amazing time. That's how my life just circles. Well, I like Krista Tippet's On Being, do you ever listen to On Being broadcasts?

Hartford:

Uh-huh.

Milligan:

O-N —

Hartford:

I don't know that.

Milligan:

— B-E-I-N-G. You would love her. She's very good.

Hartford:

Say it again.

Milligan:

On Being, O-N and then B-E-I-N-G. It's a broadcast, a podcast. And Vincent's wife was being interviewed —

Hartford:

Rosemarie.

Milligan:

— for one of the broadcast. And the title of it is, I knew Him Four Years, Three Months, 12 Days, and 17 Seconds or something like this. She went down to the seconds in terms of how long she and Vincent were together, because they knew each other back in the day, had different families and all like that. And then as life does stuff, they got together towards the end. And their love story's just so phenomenal to me. I'm a hoodwink for love stories. So —

Hartford:

You're talking about Rosemarie Harding?

Milligan:

That was his first wife. Uh-huh. I'm talking about the second wife.

Hartford:

Oh.

Milligan:

Her name is Anna — What is her name? Aljosie, A-L-J-O-S-I-E. Alijosie Harding, his second wife.

Hartford:

Oh, I never knew her. I didn't —

Milligan:

Oh, they have a Had a wonderful marriage. Wonderful marriage. So when you talk about my life, summing up my life, it includes all of that, just children, deaths, my relationship to my paternal grandmother, my father's mother, is a special story. Just a whole lot. I call myself now the Abolitionist Gogo. Gogo is a Zulu word for grandmother. And so I've branded myself as the Abolitionist Gogo.

Hartford:

Okay.

Milligan:

Because my priority for this next 70 years is my grandchildren. But I cannot shake a reminded disdain for the death penalty. When I was in Atlanta in '72, we were organizing against the death penalty. And a young Black man was arrested, Henry Whitlock, had been arrested and charged with capital murder of a policeman and was on death row. But that summer of '72 was when the Supreme Court suspended capital punishment, and called a hiatus on capital punishment with the Furman decision, Furman versus Georgia. And that was a real big thing in the death penalty annals.

Well, I was active during the time of Furman. And so now that's cycled back around in my life. I find the United States' non-position against capital punishment to be more than atrocious. It is just absurd to me that as recently as a December vote at the UN a 125 countries voted against the death penalty. And the United States was among 36 that voted against that, that did not support that proposal to ban the death penalty, along with Iran. How can a country side — I mean, it's absurd to me the country's stance on capital punishment, much less my particular state of Alabama.

The data of the numbers of people, innocent people that are convicted. The data about false testimony and contrived evidence, all that stuff. I mean, it is just so absolutely horrific. How can we be a country — How can we be human beings that want murder, that want blood? And the whole notion of life without parole is not a viable alternative, because men on death row say they would rather be executed than to have no hope, and to languish on death row.

And I'm a pen pal with a young man on Texas death row, which is another whole story, but a beautiful story about redemption and reconciliation. This young man's name is Ramiro Felix Gonzalez. And he was convicted of rape and murder and burying the body of an 18-year-old young girl, 20 something years ago. And he had not been charge with that crime, in the process of being arrested for another crime, the arresting officer asked him all out of the blue, I think it was God, all out of the blue, "Do you know where this body is?" And he said, "I don't know who you're talking about." And so this officer said to him, "Do the right thing. At least tell her mother where she's buried, where you buried her."

Did not know anything, because they was in different cities, no relationship at all. But she was lead to talk to him. And he confessed and is now on death row. Part of his sentencing was based on a psychiatrist's testimony about his ill repute and his not being able to change, his irredeemable nature. And that if given the same circumstances, he would commit the crime again. All this kind of stuff. Well, this young man, Ramiro wanted to donate a kidney to a woman before he was executed. And so he petitioned a stay of execution, so he could donate his kidney before he died.

And in the process of getting that stay, the psychologist that testified against him went on record, and said that he was recanting that testimony that Ramiro had in fact changed, that he was not the person that he described 20 years ago, and that he should not be executed. And so he's been given a stay. And is a phenomenal soul, just a phenomenal young man. And his whole life story about his having been abused and the things that contributed to his behavior, heartbreaking, heartbreaking. He did the right thing, and now we going to murder him, kill him. So the whole capital punishment is another thing that's really part of my life.

I'm adamant about happiness. I think that when the Dalai Lama says that, "The purpose of life is to be happy," I think putting that in context, so that it's not just selfishness or self-aggrandizement or narcissism, but happiness that comes from helping other people is something that's part of my life. I find I am happy when other people are happy. And I find that a part of life's journey includes the opportunity to learn from lessons with which we are presented in the process of living. And I think it's incumbent upon Claire to learn her lessons, because each repeat is successively harder.

So for example, one of my life's lessons had to deal with men. The script that I came in with was, "I did not know my father." And so I made a lot of bad choices in relationships with men in this process of growing up without my biological father. My grandfather filled the gap, tremendously, but there's still something different about a young woman and her father. And so I went through a series of bad relationships with men. Up to this point, I'm about to kill one. And so I think I learned that lesson about men. So I ain't going to kill nobody. But that's as far as I've come on that men lesson, I'm ready for the happy part with men now.

Hartford:

Well, it's an important point. I mean —

Milligan:

Yes. Yes, I think so. But I'm ready for the happiness in that painful lesson, because I think that we are supposed to be happy. And I find happiness in my grandchildren, which is another whole story, because both of them are miracle children. Ruby was born almost eight weeks premature, a pound than something in the NICU. And her brother Eli, developed almost something worse than meningitis, but was in ICU, NICU, not NICU, but in ICU for several weeks. And so both of my grandbabies have had health challenges, and they are the most phenomenon, brilliant, beautiful children now in the world, who want to be loved.

Hartford:

And they're with you in Montgomery?

Milligan:

Uh-huh. They're here in Montgomery. And so I'm an official gogo with two car seats in the back of my car, so I can haul my grandchildren around.

Hartford:

Okay. Well, on that happy note. How about —

Milligan:

Yes.

Hartford:

Because I'm wore out.

Milligan:

Yes, yes, yes.

Hartford:

So I'm going to stop recording now. Thank you —

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

— for a great interview.

Milligan:

Okay.

Hartford:

And we will schedule round two soon.

Milligan:

Okay, good deal. Good —

Copyright © Claire Milligan. 2023

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