Freedom on My Mind (1994)

L.C. Dorsey: Self

Quotes 

• Curtis Hayes : You knew couldn't look at white women - look at them in the eye - without gettin' in trouble.

  L.C. Dorsey : 'Cause you could be lynched for eye rape, which was really something that people believed in - that you were looking at a woman in a way that indicated that you had bad intentions toward her.

• L.C. Dorsey : What I remember about meeting white kids, the first time, who were Movement kids - young people in the Movement, was their demeanor: how they treated us, how they approached you, how they were courteous and polite, and how they didn't talk down to you. And there was no fear associated to talking to them. There was no consciousness of your place with them.

• [first lines] 

  L.C. Dorsey : You don't dream, things that you can't imagine. I dreamed about just growing up and being married and having a white house with a white fence and staying in it and cooking and I'm sure that came from my "Dick and Jane" reader. In high school, I decided I really wanted to be a secretary, 'cause I'd seen one someplace, maybe in a magazine. And they wore church clothes, everyday, and they didn't have to chop cotton and they didn't have to pick cotton, they didn't have to be in the hot sun. They sat in a nice office. And I saw pictures of them talkin' on the telephone. And I thought that was an *excellent* job to have. It would be an excellent way to spend your life.

• L.C. Dorsey : The Movement exposed you to people who lived differently. It exposed you to ideas and interests and concerns and, for the first time, introduced the possibility of a different life than just pickin' and choppin' cotton. It unleashed yearnings in me.

• L.C. Dorsey : I started choppin' cotton, I think, when I was about 6 or 7. And basically I was very happy. I mean, I didn't know that we were poor. Cause everybody I knew, except the white folk - who we all knew lived differently, lived the same way we did. You know, I thought we were fine.

• L.C. Dorsey : My father was unable to read and write. He'd never gone to school. He was convinced that education was the only was black people had to get out of anything they were in.

• L.C. Dorsey : The straw boss, the agent, the guy who was hired to run the operation, like a business manager, was opposed to us going to school when there was work to be done. And he had a rule. He would go around and say that these kids are too big to be in school, any way, and they need to be in the field. And my father so so adamant about going to school until - he would walk us to the bus stop with this gun every morning.

• L.C. Dorsey : It was like livin' in a foreign country where you were challenging the powers to be and it was with no protections. There were no courts to concern themselves about our lives. The FBI was not down to protect us from a crime of violence. There were no law enforcement, local or state law enforcement officers to protect us. So, it was a very scary - period.

• L.C. Dorsey : I was really excited about that. I would run home every evening and listen to it and every weekend, when the newspapers came, we'd read about it in the newspaper. It was people saying we're not taking this stuff any more. Who stood right up and looked them in the eye in a way I had never seen anybody do with white folks.

• L.C. Dorsey : I went up to this white man and told him who I was and that I wanted to see if he had any objection to me talking to his people about registering to vote. And he was so nice. He said, "No, I don't." And I was saying, "Oh, gee, this was going to be a piece. of cake." And as I was walking away, he called to me and said, "Oh, by the way, when you finish registering them to vote, don't bring them back here. Take 'em to your house." And that just stopped me cold; because, I was livin' in this condemned house myself that wasn't fit for people to be livin' in. I had no place. I had no job.

• L.C. Dorsey : So, you learned how to negotiate your life with white folks. And, I guess, you also leaned the fear associated with them - of how much power they actually had over you. How they could determine whether you could continue to live or whether - you died.