A Participant Recalls King’s Rights Struggle

William Thomas Sr., a 44-year-old Pacoima insurance agent, stopped in mid-conversation, pulled a set of dentures out of his mouth and said he would remember the spring of 1963 in Birmingham, Ala., for the rest of his life.

“I was marching in the front of the line,” he said with wide, serious eyes, his fingers rubbing his lip as he recalled the confrontation, which left him without his upper teeth.

“The police billy-clubbed me.”

But that clubbing, one of many during a period when crowds of civil rights demonstrators were blasted with water from fire hoses and attacked by dogs in highly segregated Birmingham, is not the memory that Thomas clings to.

Instead, he sees himself several months earlier in the Birmingham city jail, a time he said changed his life.

While taking a break from Monday’s annual program commemorating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday at the Pacoima Community Center, Thomas recalled that, for five days, he and 50 other incarcerated black men sang, prayed and listened to King, who was jailed with them.

“It’s hard for people to really know how one man can touch another man’s life. But during those five days he showed me the things that I could do. I could educate myself, make things happen, change things,” Thomas said. “When that man prayed, you could feel the power.”

Born and raised in Birmingham, Thomas was swept into the civil rights movement during his sophomore year at Miles College in that city.

“We had a feeling something good was going to happen,” Thomas said. “I remember it was March, 1963, and Dr. King was coming to speak at 16th Street Baptist Church. The church was the biggest in the city and was packed. Everyone was jubilant.”

Thomas recalled that the church meeting lasted from 3 until 11 p.m. Thomas was chosen as a student coordinator for sit-ins at a local soda fountain. Plans were made for a march from the church to City Hall.

“He told us to put God in front of us when we were walking,” Thomas said of King. “He said, ‘Whatever happens to us, don’t react, don’t retaliate. No matter what they throw at us, don’t get mad.’ ”

For three days after the meeting, Thomas said, he and a group of six college friends sat at the counter of a local drug store fountain and ordered a cup of coffee.

“They would serve us the coffee, and, when we were done, they would smash the cups in front of our faces,” Thomas said.

Although the date of the march has been clouded by time, Thomas said he remembers the scene of hundreds of people--students, neighbors--gathering at 16th Street Baptist Church for the mile walk with King.

“Everyone was singing, holding hands. Everyone was together,” he said.

After marching about four blocks, the demonstrators were met by police and many were taken to jail, Thomas said.

“They didn’t handcuff us, just pushed us into the wagons. They said we were parading without a license or something,” he said.

Thomas doesn’t know how many were arrested that day, only that the cell he and 50 others shared with King was the first in a long hallway of crowded cells.

“The first thing we did in that cell was sing a song--’We Shall Overcome.’ Everyone was joyous. We knew we were right,” Thomas said. “Dr. King had a short talk. He told us not to fret, not to feel like criminals. Everyone stayed in a happy mood for the five days, singing, praying. It was during that time that I realized that a prayerful man can make things happen.”

When Thomas was released from jail, he said, he continued the sit-ins at restaurants. It was during a march two months later with more than 100 students to a downtown Birmingham lunch counter, he said, that he was billy-clubbed.

“It still feels like yesterday,” he said.

A short time afterward, Thomas moved to Pacoima, where his older sister lived. He attended California State University, Northridge, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. He has worked in advertising and for 14 years has been with a Van Nuys insurance company. Thomas, his wife and three children, ranging in age from 4 to 19, live in an apartment on Mercer Street in Pacoima.

The Greater Community Baptist Church in Pacoima, where he is superintendent of the Sunday school and supervisor of the youth ushers, provides his most rewarding activities, he said.

“I really don’t talk about this too much. Most people don’t know I spent time with the man (King). My daughter thinks I’m lying when I tell her about it,” Thomas said. “What I did is gone and in society’s past. But it’s taught me how to live for today.”