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Wheeler Parker Jr. Interview, 5-23-11 Page 37 of 37 Civil Rights History Project Interview completed by the Southern Oral History Program under contract to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
Image 2 of 1 transcript
JM: Okay. This is Monday, May the 23rd, 2011. We’re in, um, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, with, uh, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. to do an oral history interview for the National...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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WP: Nothing wrong with the land and the dirt. The people weren’t too cool. [Laughter] But Mississippi’s okay. JM: You moved to, um, Chicago, I think, in ’47. WP: Moved to Summit...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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JM: Um-hmm. How about the, um - can you say a little bit more just descriptively about the house, about the little town of Money, about the - about Dark Fear Road?...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
Image 5 of 1 transcript
And some people lived back down in the woods-like. They were all surrounded by farmland. Everything is farming. A few settlements, but everything related to the farming. And uptown we had three...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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Ah, but your friends - we just had so much fun! Man, there should have been a law against it! You know, we just had good fun with nothing, you know, and...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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[Recording stops and then resumes] JB: We’re rolling. JM: Okay. We’re back on after a short pause just to check our equipment. Um, Reverend Parker, I was just about to raise this...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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I think that’s when we started rushing to the car. I don’t know how many of us in the car; there was a lot of us in the car. We rushed to...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
Image 9 of 1 transcript
WP: Imagination is powerful. JM: Yeah. JM: But anyway, we met and we talked. And at this point, we didn’t take it serious. I felt relief. You know, the car went by....
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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WP: Yeah. [Laughs] JM: Before you go forward with that story, if I - forgive me for interrupting - WP: No problem. JM: I want to ask you, take you back just...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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JM: And just to - just to say another word about this, it doesn’t sound as if you’re saying that these were in any way hard-edged or mean-spirited things. He was just...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
Image 12 of 1 transcript
JM: Let me go back and have you tell that again, just the age difference thing. Sorry about the mic. WP: Yeah, the age difference thing. And, you know, it’s kind of...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
Image 13 of 1 transcript
So, when they said, “We’re looking for a fat boy from Chicago,” and I’d heard what they had done to people, killed people, and threw people in the river and all that,...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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They went to the next room. Curtis is there. He’s there now. Curtis didn’t wake up. They passed by my Uncle Robert. He didn’t wake up. They went into the third room,...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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WP: And I didn’t hear anything anybody said, but they were angry. And they left. And when they left my grandmother left. And my grandfather left! And I’m sixteen, you know. And...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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So, Curtis did call, and then his mother called Emmett Till’s mother. And my mother got involved, and my daddy had a brother lived there, and he came over. And, again, he...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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WP: Umm, I arrived at the train station. I can’t even remember who picked me up, but I know that they whisked me off to, uh, Mrs. Till’s house on 64th and...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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WP: A lot of people. Just a conglomeration of people, you know. The solemn atmosphere there, you know, it’s just - it’s just unbelievable, I guess you could say. The air was...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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So, one day I asked God to help me, and I just changed. Very few people in any church, in any denomination, in their twenties - you’re not going to find it,...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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JM: Yeah. WP: Yeah, my grandfather and my grandmother, they were characters. [Laughs] They were a lot of fun. JM: How did you, um -? Let me ask this question in a...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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So, that’s pretty much, uh, the first time, Rich Samuels, and they did that. And, uh, then it was like an idea whose time has come, you know. It just started happening,...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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WP: Well, I’ve often thought of - what you’re talking about is the, uh - all of a sudden, there’s interest. All of a sudden, there’s momentum, trying to do some things...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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JM: Sure. When the case was reopened, 2004, 2005, I m interested in your range of thoughts about that, as you watched the things that did happen in that process, including the...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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I want to know what happened. Mrs. Bryant knows what happened. That’s what I would love - that would do me a whole lot of good. Not going to bring Emmett back,...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
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I don’t let nobody try to make me a hero or something great, because all I did was survive, scared as I could be. I’m no hero. I just survived to tell...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
Image 26 of 1 transcript
JM: Those efforts, insofar as they’ve happened, in the cases we’ve just described - those efforts seem to you well-meaning and sincere, or are the motives more complicated than that? WP: I...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)
Date:2011
Film, Video
Image 27 of 1 transcript
So, I tell them, I say, “Look, you guys are going to be senators or whatever you are.” I say, “You can make the difference. Do what’s right.” One white kid told...
Contributor:
Parker, Wheeler - Mosnier, Joseph - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.)