JULIETTE MORGAN 1

JULIETTE MORGAN

 

By

Tom Tomlinson: author of: ‘The Absurdity of Pigeon Feed’

 

First a quick word about the photograph.

I take pride in my single exposure pictures: critics accuse, ‘They’re just Photoshop montages’; true I clean up, enhance with saturation, illumination values and sharpen etc. And in the main I try to keep it at that.

This night exposure presented the usual challenges with the addition of the unpredictability of fire. When I set light to the display I was shocked, fire instantly raged out of control and for that reason I can honestly say this picture owes far more to luck than my skill.

As they say, ‘Just one spark can set off an unpredictable sequence of events that leads on to who knows where?

 

And with that, onwards to the main theme: Juliette Morgan…

 

In all probability Rosa knew little to nothing of the intricacies of Parking Regulations. Like most coloureds she didn’t own a car, and then, when you get right down to it, as far as regulations and bylaws are concerned – and it’s the same for all us common folk – they’re all apt to ire towards an unintelligible complexity when chiselled in stone by a ruling elite for their benefit alone.

On the other hand; Rosa – a long term secretary to E.D. Nixon, one time State President of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) – was ‘way up there’ in her understanding of one particular set of parking regulations; a set of white supremacist racist regulations aimed specifically at discriminating against all her coloured brethren, family and herself.

 

I like to believe that as an educated coloured woman, Rosa hesitated to use the common vernacular ‘parking your ass’ in polite company or with white folk. But who knows?

Whatever, the fact remains; in Montgomery Alabama on Monday December 1 1955, contrary to unconstitutional racist bylaws Rosa did indeed park her ass on a seat designated for coloured folk on a segregated bus; and, adamantly refused to move it for white assholes when ordered to vacate it.

A policeman ordered, ‘Now, you-all make it light on yourself.’

Famously: well, popular legend has it; Rosa complained, ‘No. I’m not going to do it. My feet hurt.’

Rosa was arrested.

One individual up against an intransigent white supremacist paradigm. Romantic?

No worries, Rosa wasn’t going to be parking her ass in jail for too long. E. D. Nixon bailed her out and called for a one day bus boycott of the entire coloured population of Montgomery.

Rosa was fined $10 plus $4 court fees for not standing up for racist white asshole by-laws; her act of defiance sparked off a sequence of events that would change both her and everyone else’s world.

 

This all happened at a time that was begging for long overdue change in Montgomery, however, white folk minds were frozen in time, they didn’t want no change, looking backwards was the name of the game, especially in the case of white conservatives, (still is) after-all they held a monopoly on law and had wielded its discriminatory unchallenged power for generations. In actual fact; since their despicable forefathers had first stolen the coloured population away from Africa in the name of dirty profit and the self-righteous Christian’s values of the time.

 

Another upstanding individual, the young twenty six year old Rev. Martin Luther King read of the incident, made some phone calls packed up his copy of Gandhi’s ‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth’ (An autobiographical account of how he developed his faith in non-violent resistance to tyranny) and grabbed a train down to Montgomery to lend support.

 

The Bus Boycott started on Monday 5 December with nigh on 100% support from the coloured community and that very same night the hesitant and newly arrived Martin brought the crammed full Baptist Church House down with one of the most eloquent and rousing speeches of his life. Deafening applause went on for nearly as long as he’d taken to write it. (Twenty minutes)

The inspired Montgomery Improvement Association members all stood up as one and voted unanimously to extend the Bus Boycott indefinitely and at the same time so began the nurture and first steps in of great leader.

 

The fight was never going to be easy, in the Dark left corner we have ‘Them’ a poor minority subjugated and undereducated community and in the White Right corner we have ignorant, ‘Us’ and power.

If you were betting man of the time, you’d lay your money down on the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery and the powerful dogma of the day – Eugenics.

 

Montgomery’s almost blind, monochromatic KKK Grand Cyclops main man rallied his rabble and spewed hate, ‘They want to throw our white children and black children into the melting pot of integration, out of which will come a conglomerated balata (Indian Gum) of mongrel type people.’

Yes, Eugenics that’s where it’s at man: it’s the given name for all that’s left over after you’ve taken Darwin’s theory of evolution and brutally gang banged it for multiple generations for the sole benefit of the Uberman.

Francis Dalton’s septic mind came up with that one, and its dogma caused untold Genocidal carnage worldwide in the twentieth century and still lurks latent raising its foul head now again.

 

And that’s the problem with any ‘well dodgy and sticky Meme’ be it racial discrimination or any other idealism; rapacious confirmation bias is always on the look-out to ratify a meme’s validity by tapping into any good ole readily ‘Available’ ‘Agency’ – or any other biases for that matter – that simplify and reduce the world’s complex woes palatable for an ignorant reductionist’s digestion.

 

The ‘Us’ camp closed ranks and dug-in. Protect the very best of up-right Southern Christian moral virtues. (At any cost for the KKK.)

And as the white community closed ranks, the KKK first mumbled, then grumbled, paraded, then shot up the busses, the town; and then – most probably result of some moron’s whimsical afterthought – finally got around to bombing the rebellious Kings’ residence.

 

Another up-right individual is now in need of an introduction: Juliette Hampton Morgan, a white woman in her prime; born into the seventh generation of an aristocratic family of great wealth.

Juliette received a very privilege education, one that certainly exposed her to the modern theory of liberty and freedom by way of Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Bentham and more especially the Hindu philosophy of Gandhi. And then John Stuart Mill’s – ‘On Liberty’ – would have taught her the sanctity of free expression in a free market place of ideas. That to silence ANY opinion or idea in the market place is to deprive humanity of the opportunity to explore the truth; (unless it results in real harm). In effect, to silence opinions and ideas in any manner reduces society to a despotic or dictatorial regime.

Dangerous stuff.

Take a narcissist or functioning schizotypal personality evangelising his personal paradigm and they’ll soon find disciples to take up their cause. Power grows in direct proportion to their intolerance towards any ‘Them’ who refuse to think the same. Frustration becomes aggression and aggression becomes violence and suddenly we have ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ and war, pointless suffering and no hope.

Why can’t ‘Us’ just say, ‘I don’t care if the ‘Them’ think differently?

Nearly all the hate, war, death and unnecessary suffering we see in the world today was birthed in that manner.

 

Back to Juliette: sources described Juliette as a sensitive woman, one prone to panic attacks and depression. Her condition disabled her such that she was too fearful to drive a car, consequently, after securing a job as Montgomery’s Librarian her chosen mode of transport to work was the municipal’s segregated busses.

 

I can’t get the thought out of my head and my argument may sound flimsy, but there’s some kind of similarity between Juliette and Siddhartha Gautama’s story: they both were unbelievably privileged in their halcyon days; both were shielded from the harsh realities of life and, later, in a relatively short space of time exposed to all its brutish reality in one great gush; not forgetting and most importantly, both were inspired by ancient Hindu philosophy turning traumatic experience into Inner growth.

 

Siddhartha jumped his palace wall and went in search of understanding and truth so as to bring about an end to his suffering – which in-turn led on to The Buddha’s enlightenment and his gift to humanity: his teachings.

Juliette chose a different although equally noble path when exposed to the cruel and brutish reality of a racially divided society, she chose to confront suffering too – with her philosophy and eloquent pen of truth – and so began her own journey in search of freedom and justice for the racially divided down trodden for the betterment of all humanity.

 

Riding those segregated busses day after day had already led Juliette to speak out against white racist injustices she’d witnessed over the16 years before the boycott began, both on the busses, and by way of her letter’s to the Editor of the Montgomery Advertiser.

As ridicule, slander and hate mounted against her from the white community for refusing to think the same as them, more often than not she walked miles to her place of work to avoid the hurt.

She may well have been replying to her detractors when she wrote, ‘Everyone who has the faith to do what he believes right in scorn of the consequences, does great good in preparing the way for a happier and more equitable future for all Americans.’

 

I don’t think Juliette considered herself either part of the divided ‘Us’ or ‘Them’ camp for the simple reason her actions describe a person dedicated to truth; the truth that the whole of humanity is one big ‘Us.’ That’s a crystal clear echo of Gandhi’s Hindu mantra – ‘We are all part of one-another.’

She was undoubtedly familiar with Gandhi’s galvanising and very effective soft sword of Hindu Swaraj.

The doctrine of Swaraj originates from the ancient Indian Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita: ‘raj’ meaning to rule over, and ‘swa’ meaning one’s own. ‘Rule over one’s own soul or oneself.’

A doctrine that lays out a map for a personal journey; one that liberates oneself from ignorance and above all from a reality distorted by fear. A fear that results in the sin of separation, where the tyranny of the majority rule over and subjugate a minority.

 

Juliette’s education set her free from the chains and influence of a corrupt church’s hypocrisy and the paradigm of the Herd, It dictated that she had no option other than speak-out in support of the bus boycott. A week after its commencement she continued her passive protest by writing a series of open letters to the editor of ‘The Montgomery Advertiser’ one of which compared the Bus Boycott to Gandhi’s non-violent protest in the Indian fight for liberation from their British oppressors. Poignantly; she compared the bus boycott – which resulted in thousands walking untold miles to work each and every day – to Gandhi’s epic salt march.

 

Shirking from mounting pressure, Martin Luther King was hesitant of taking on leadership of the movement, since, young of years and inexperienced, he simply saw himself as ill-equipped to handle it.

He read Juliette’s letters and they became a catalyst for him in those early boycott days of doubt, they became some kind of affirmation of his thoughts; his philosophy, on how to run such a crusade. Juliette had pointed to Gandhi’s philosophy of creedal non-violent civil disobedience by non-participation; Martin acknowledged an ethically moral highway was open to be walked upon offering up a journey of hope for future reform. Refortified he took his first hesitant steps (as Gandhi had once done) on a journey that would lead on to his life’s vocation.

 

Without doubt Juliette was well aware of the exact height of ‘mount reform’: the time; and what it would take to re-educate the local populace from church spire politics way-on-down to street level.

I find it difficult to believe those individuals who decided to step out of line in a predominantly white populated town were not aware the up and coming battle to conquer any moral high ground would come at a terrible price.

The ‘Us’ camp were awe-struck, horrified yet again at the publication of another of Juliette’s audacious unwavering declarations of support for the coloured community. She received hatful threats, threats not only jeopardising her beloved job as Librarian, but her very life as well.

 

At this point let’s take a break and try to imagine what it was like for a single white women living in Montgomery at this time, a time when the general level of education of its residents and their petty gossip must have already left Juliette isolate.

Tainted as a spinster, this beautiful highfaluting woman disrespected social norms – the sacred tradition of marriage and family. Undoubtedly, given the degree and entrenchment of the white dominated patriarchal community of the time, she was seen as a trouble making oddity. (It never bodes well to live a life in the shadows of the majority.)

 

Maybe she’d even spoken out for the feminist cause of emancipation?

Well, slow backwater machos would have perceived that as some kind of communist plot to undermine the holy status quo of red-necked America. Women were still for breeding only and their political voice or voice on any other matter was still permanently muted in the rebel Southern Territories on menace of a right-good wife-bashing.

 

Both you and I remember the first unfounded, unintelligible, hurtful slight dealt out against us in our youth.

What did I do to deserve that?

Now imagine; your best friends begin to turn their backs on you because your ideas no longer marry with the popular paradigms of the day.

No mystery there.

But, you know your ideas hold sacred truths, you see them for what they are: indisputable; the intellectual community of the day and the outside world see them the same way, but that paradigm shift of consensus hasn’t had the time it takes to percolate down to the masses and change the prevalent Zeitgeist.

You are alone in your bubble, so you desperately try to educate anyone that will listen, but the listeners are ADHD inattentive; they become agitated, angered, and fewer, and finally no one will listen to you at all. A social wall of ‘Us’ ignorance has arisen around you and your sacred truths obstructing all your well intentioned efforts.

You have inadvertently become a ‘Them,’ although the reality is your fate had already been pre-ordained, signed, sealed and delivered by virtue of your open free thinking mind and privileged education.

 

In a way you understand that your friends and associates have little option other than to desert you if they are to still ‘fit-in,’ but once they’d done so, just imagine the shock and pain when they wholeheartedly join the stampede of abusers ridiculing and insulting you.

Let’s just take a second to dig deeper; imagine the pain you would feel.

Imagine the hurt inflicted on you by that bully boy/girl who persecuted you in your youth and how his/her minions joined in if only to raise themselves up in the herd. Imagine how it felt when the hurt became an incessant barrage going on day after interminable day.

Imagine no sanctuary, no sanctuary anywhere in which to hide, no sanctuary where the world would just melt away and leave your mind free from the discordant rapacious hate of the ignorant; of the constant never ending daily persecution.

 

That’s how I believe Juliette suffered; and if ever a personality profile was ill equipped to cope with ridicule and persecution it was slight, fail and sensitive Juliette’s.

And I wonder: I wonder why she didn’t stop writing those letters after that first brush off; after that first friend or comrade turned away; after that first act that would lead on to her being ostracised by the whole community. And onward; to the first shout from the ‘Us’ of, ‘traitor’ and all too quickly followed on by a shout of ‘nigger lover,’ and I don’t find it hard to imagine the degree of invective slander that followed: all because she wouldn’t turn her back on the truth.

Frail and sensitive Juliet, she didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop writing those letters, letters written in the name of truth and reason.

Was she naïve or just plain stupid?

Most defiantly not.

Did she mistakenly imagine the spoilt children would forget or become hoarse mouthed and bored by their constant tirade of abuse?

Who knows?

Threatened with losing her job once again, Juliette didn’t hesitate to write to Buford Boone, a newspaper Editor when he ‘came-out’ in support of change; he published her letter in the Tuscaloosa News on January 14th, 1957: Juliette wrote…

‘There are so many Southerners from various walks of life that know you are right. … They know Southern way of life must inevitably change. Many of them even are eager for change, but are afraid to express themselves – so afraid to stand alone, to walk out naked as it were.’

 

Crosses were burnt in Juliette’s yard that very same night.

 

The next morning, frail and sensitive Juliette, a Librarian no longer,

(She’d been forced to resign) resorted to suicide.

 

Somewhat ironically Juliette had written sometime before….

‘In the future and it might seem impossible now, but history will mark that this was Montgomery’s finest hour.’

 

And taken as a whole that maybe so, but I’d also say, it was an outstanding, courageous Individual’s finest hour as well…

Juliette Morgan’s.

 

On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on busses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, adopted in 1868 following the American Civil War (1861-65), guarantees all citizens, regardless of race, equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws. The city appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision on December 20, 1956. Montgomery’s busses were integrated on December 21, 1956, and the boycott ended. It had lasted 381 days.

 

The names of Rosa Parks and the Rev Martin Luther King have lived on in the memory of both black and white folks alike for being individualists, for stepping out of line and for the heroic parts they played in the fight for racial equality and emancipation of a long suffering minority of American society forced to live under the weight of white supremacist’s laws.

Juliette’s name has almost been forgotten.

 

 

I was inspired to write this at a time when humanity has never had it so good and yet a tsunami of cynical nihilism is drowning the weak minded and insecure; when false news – false information – has become ubiquitous, where ‘agency,’ ‘availability’ and ‘confirmation’ biases rule. A time of flat Earth morons and holocaust denial; a time in which ultra-right, white supremacist and neo-Nazis are yet again on the rise and marching plain as day; as the whole world has witnessed in Charlottesville.

Shame on you all.

The United States of America’s President Donald Trump described them as, ‘mostly good folk.’

Shame on you Meme Sump Trump.

Shame on every suckered idiot who joined the Facebook herd and voted for him.

 

This Essay is dedicated to Juliette Morgan as a reminder to – the ‘Us’ – Trump, Sessions and their white folk, of what it really takes to be an upstanding, outstanding individual of integrity.

It is meant as reminder to us all of the arduous journey travelled up and along the moral highway of justice and liberty that has brought about positive change and in the hope that no U-turn should ever be made upon it jeopardising the hard earned hallowed ground conquered in the name of liberty and freedom for all.

 

By Tom Tomlinson author of: ‘The Absurdity of Pigeon Feed’

Essayist and conceptual photographer.

 

 

Done