James Armstong, civil rights flag bearer, dies http://blog.al.com/birmingham-news-stories/2009/11/james_armstong_civil_rights_fl.html
By Erin Stock -- The Birmingham News November 19, 2009 Birmingham barber James Armstrong, a civil rights foot soldier who carried the American flag at the head of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march, died Wednesday. He was 86. Mr. Armstrong died of heart failure, said Dwight Armstrong, one of his four children. On Wednesday the barbershop he ran for more than 50 years was locked, with a "for sale" sign on the door. But signs of its life -- decades of it -- were apparent from the sidewalk. On the door was a faded message: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." And next to that: "If you don't vote, don't talk politics in here." The messages seem fitting for Mr. Armstrong, who initiated a class-action lawsuit so his children could attend a Birmingham school previously reserved for whites. The suit resulted in desegregation of the city's schools. The Army veteran also famously carried the American flag across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, a day that is credited with ensuring passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. When authorities turned on marchers that day, Mr. Armstrong dropped to his knees, but "he never did let that flag hit the ground," said Shirley Gavin Floyd, the business manager for the Civil Rights Activist Committee in Birmingham who has heard firsthand accounts of the march. The flag was the first thing visitors would see at Mr. Armstrong's College Hills home. He carried it every year during anniversary marches in Selma, and on it he wrote the dates he made the journey, Floyd said. "I'll keep coming back as long as I can walk," Mr. Armstrong said in an interview at age 77. "One day, I may even come in a wheelchair." 'One of the best' Mr. Armstrong's health had been spotty in the past couple of years, but he opened his barbershop when he could. His clients over the years included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a man Mr. Armstrong considered a teacher and role model. They also included Smithfield residents such as Larry Thomas, who would sit in Mr. Armstrong's barber chair as a child. "One of the best people you ever wanted to know," said Thomas, 56. Mr. Armstrong was born in 1923 in Dallas County to farmers with no more than a sixth-grade education, according to an oral history he gave in 1995. After high school, he was drafted into the Army at age 18 and spent more than two years in Europe for World War II. The battle overseas prepared him for another fight. "He came back to Alabama and he knew God had a plan for him," said Dwight Armstrong, who remembers his father as a committed and disciplined man. Because he ran his own business, Mr. Armstrong could conduct sit-ins and other demonstrations without fear of retribution from an employer, said Angela Hall, vice president of publications at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. He landed in jail several times, and when the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was arrested, Mr. Armstrong was close behind to protect him, Floyd said. "I went to jail so many times until the man wanted to know when I was going to stop coming over here -- he had my fingerprints so much," Mr. Armstrong told a historian. "I said, 'Well, you get things straight, I don't have to come.'" Obama's win his, too In 1957, Mr. Armstrong sued after unsuccessfully trying to enroll his children at the all-white Graymont Elementary. Several years later, when two of his sons became the first black students to attend the school, Mr. Armstrong would go every day before classes let out to ensure they were safe. After Dwight Armstrong came home with a bloodied lip, he advised his sons to go to the drinking fountain as a pair. When Barack Obama was elected president, Mr. Armstrong was elated because it was the culmination of his work, Floyd said. He was heartbroken when, because of poor health, he had to cancel his trip to Washington for the inauguration, she said. His activism continued in later years, as he sought to pass along history in his humble way. He would invite the neighborhood children over and share his stories, said Bernetia Ford, Mr. Armstrong's neighbor. As a volunteer at the Civil Rights Institute, he would tell visitors every week the experience behind the photo of him and his sons on exhibit. "With the exception of the weekend he was down in Selma for the bridge crossing," Hall said, "you could count on him to be here every Sunday." . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
