Blue jeans put Huntsville in civil rights movement
HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - Huntsville was way ahead of cities around the state and some part of the country when it came to the civil rights movement.
Huntsville was the first city in the state to desegregate lunch counters and it's schools.
80-year-old Sonnie Hereford looked back at an old picture as he walked his son into a Huntsville school in 1963.
"That ended one hundred years of segregation in public schools in the state of Alabama."
As folks further to the south dealt with hoses and dogs, some dedicated young Huntsville residents like Hereford started their own movement.
Two years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was even signed, Huntsville was well on it's way to changing.
Hereford with his new camera documented it all and it started with a simple request.
"At first we were just asking them to remove the white and colored signs from the courthouse."
Huntsville's black community wanted the same rights, like eating at lunch counters and using restrooms in the department stores. Hereford organized Huntsville's first sit-ins and picketing.
"We were just trying to do the best that we could to desegregate the city."
Protests got unconventional; With Easter Sunday looming and department stores still not budging to hire blacks or allow them to even use a restroom, Hereford and others decided to change Easter Sunday into blue jean Sunday. No one bought anything out of the stores.
"It was very effective. We estimate that the merchants lost approximately a million dollars that Easter in 1962."
The boycott brought merchants to their knees, but the fight did not stop there.
Desegregating schools in Huntsville was next and they took their fight to court.
After many attempts, Sonnie Hereford walked his son through doors of an all white school desegregating the first school in all of Alabama.
Hereford was also influential in bringing Dr. Martin Luther King to the "Rocket City" before his popularity grew. He spoke at a local church and Oakwood College's Gymnasium.
©2011 WAFF. All rights reserved
