Mants an important figure in civil rights movement
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20100415/NEWS02/4150343/1009/Mants-an-important-figure-in-civil-rights-movement
April 15, 2010
WHITE HALL -- He might not have been as well-known as John Lewis or
Stokely Carmichael, but Bob Mants forged his own civil rights
reputation, at times on the back of a borrowed mule.
Mants, who was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader,
also had a colorful nickname -- "the tall guy in the high-water pants."
He got the moniker high above the water March 7, 1965, as he helped
lead the first march from Selma to Montgomery to press for equal voting rights.
Instead, Mants and Lewis, now a U.S. congressman, and 600 other
peaceful protesters were met on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma,
where Alaba衫a state troopers and Dallas County sheriff's deputies
confronted them.
The lawmen used tear gas, billy clubs, cattle prods and other violent
means to stop the group from walking to the Capital City.
Film of the brutality was shown on national television that night,
angering the nation and leading to passage of the historic Voting
Rights Act five months later.
When SNCC veterans gather in Raleigh, N.C., today for a four-day
reunion to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their long-defunct
organization, Selma's "Bloody Sunday" violence will be a major topic
of discussion.
What Mants wore on the bridge might have been practical on that
chilly afternoon in Selma, but it would never have won any awards for
sartorial splendor.
His pants stopped 5 inches above his ankles, which were covered by
black socks. He also wore a black topcoat and a "Big Apple" cap with
a snap brim.
"Hey, it's what was in style back then, and you thought you were hip
if you wore that stuff," Mants said in a recent interview at his
Lowndes County home. "They called it the 'Continental Look.'"
A few years before the bridge brutality, Mants was a skinny Atlanta
high school kid who desperately wanted to become involved in "The Movement."
He was quickly noticed as someone willing to handle any chore to earn
his civil rights spurs. SNCC leaders could see he had what it took to
assume more important duties.
"I was 16 and the youngest member of the Atlanta Student Movement,"
he said. "Our house was only two blocks from the SNCC office."
Mants, who celebrates his 67th birthday April 25, did just about
everything as an SNCC volunteer in the early 1960s. He served as a
janitor, made sure picket signs were in good order, answered the
phones and stuffed envelopes.
He also listened intently as SNCC leaders discussed their next moves.
The civil rights movement was getting hotter by the day, with
protesters beaten and arrested during demonstrations. As he grew
older and honed his organizational skills, Mants found himself in
southwest Georgia, where he helped with voter registration efforts
during the "Albany Movement."
He wanted to be a doctor and briefly became a premed student at
Morehouse College, but there was something else that drove him toward
his association with SNCC.
It was the 1955 murder of Em衫ett Till in Money, Miss. Mants was 12
when Till, 14, was beaten, shot and thrown into the Tallahatchie
River for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
"He was two years older than I was at the time, and it has had the
most profound effect on my life," said Mants. "I remember asking my
teacher what a wolf whistle was. I still get emotional about Emmett
Till and what happened to him."
A decade after Till's murder, Mants stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge
in Selma, knowing that something bad might be about to happen to him.
He was in the second line just behind Lewis. They were closest to the
railing and could see as they reached the apex of the bridge that it
was a long way down to the Alabama River.
Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Con苯erence was
next to Lewis. Behind him was Albert Turner, an Alabama SCLC official
from nearby Perry County.
Mants said SNCC leaders didn't want to take part at first, but
eventually agreed and met SCLC officials at Brown Chapel AME Church,
which served as headquarters for the Selma protests.
"(Lewis) and I were the only two with SNCC at the time, and a coin
was flipped to see who would be where in the front rows," Mants recalled.
Williams and Turner were picked to represent the SCLC, and they lined
up with Lewis and Mants outside the church where hundreds of others
were organizing to march.
The troopers and deputies waited for most of the marchers to cross
the bridge before they went after them. Mants could sense what was
about to happen.
"What we saw has been described as a sea of blue because of the
trooper uniforms in front of us," said Mants. "Then I heard 'clack,
clack, clack, clack, clack' from troopers unbuttoning their tear gas
bags and then putting on their masks.
As clouds of gas began to spread over the bridge, troopers with billy
clubs and deputies with cattle prods on horseback rushed into the
group, pushing the four leaders back into the marchers behind them.
Lewis took a vicious whack on the head and suffered a skull fracture.
Panic separated the others, and Mants looked up to see a woman in need of help.
"I guess I must have weighed about 125 pounds soaking wet," he
recalled. "I picked her up and carried her down a ravine. She had her
sleeping bag and a quilt with her, and it dragged behind us. Somehow,
we made it to the bottom away from the tear gas."
The national outrage that followed led to a successful march to
Montgomery two weeks later. That time, the protesters had the
federalized Alabama National Guard to protect them every step of the way.
While the marchers moved through Dallas, Lowndes and Montgomery
counties, Mants focused on voter registration ef苯orts.
He teamed with Carmichael, one of the civil rights movement's most
outspoken leaders. It was quite a duo -- flamboyant Carmichael and
soft-spoken Mants.
They took turns knocking on doors of sharecropper houses and trailers
in an area where angry white landowners eventually would evict them
for trying to register to vote.
Lowndes County, which was 70 percent black, had few black voters on
the rolls when Mants and Carmichael arrived. By the time they and
other SNCC workers were finished, enough black voters were registered
to change the face of politics in the county.
A black panther was used as the symbol for the Lowndes County Freedom
Organization. California militants liked it so much that they picked
it up to symbolize their Black Panther Party. SNCC also helped erect
a "Tent City" so that those booted off their land in Lowndes County
had a place to stay until permanent housing could be found for them.
The Jackson family allowed Mants, Carmichael and other SNCC workers
to use a house it owned during their stints in the county. The house,
owned by Matthew Jackson Sr., became known as the "Freedom House."
The little building had an outhouse and a well, along with a window
view that Mants has never forgotten.
"There is nothing more beautiful than an Alabama moon on a cold
night," he recalled. "I loved to sleep in the front room so I could
look at the moon."
The SNCC workers spent most of their time away from the house as they
encouraged people to exercise their right to vote. Lowndes is a big
county with lots of space between neighbors.
"We canvassed people all over the county, and I can still remember
riding a borrowed mule along dirt roads to get to where they lived,"
said Mants. "The mule and me were quite a sight, that's for sure."
When the demonstrators ar訃ived in Montgomery on March 24, 1965,
Mants and Carmichael were on hand to greet them, but they soon
returned to Lowndes County to resume their voter registration efforts.
As the 1960s moved into its second half, SNCC's influence began to
wane as the war in Vietnam and the space race cap負ivated the
nation's attention.
"I think part of SNCC's demise can also be traced to infiltration of
it by government agents like the FBI," said Mants. "And a lot of us
just wanted to move on to other things."
Mants attended a college in New England and returned to Lowndes
County, where he served a term as a county commissioner. He was the
only out-of-state SNCC worker to put down roots in the county.
He prefers to call himself an organizer rather than a leader, but
those who have seen him work hard to help people believe he has been
unfairly forgotten by many chroniclers of the civil rights era.
"I think one of the reasons for this is the fact that Bob has never
been one to promote himself," Alabama historian Richard Bailey said.
"When he says something, you know he's not stretching it to make
himself look good."
Jerome Gray, former field co觔rdinator for the Alabama Democratic
Conference, said Mants' low-key approach to civil rights could be one
of the reasons he is not mentioned in the same breath as Lewis,
Carmichael, Andrew Young or Hosea Williams.
"It's interesting that a lot of young people who study the civil
rights movement were unfamiliar with Bob's role in it, but they are
now finally realizing how important he was," Gray said.
One historian who was well aware of Mants' contributions is Taylor
Branch, who won the Pulitzer Prize for the first of three remarkable
books on the civil rights movement.
Mants, who currently works as a farm management specialist at
Tuskegee University, is mentioned numerous times in "At Canaan's
Edge," the third and final installment in the epic trilogy.
As he grows older, Mants has become more reflective of his civil
rights past and is opening up more about his role in the movement.
He's also finally decided to write his autobiography about those days.
"I've never been one who tried to capitalize on whatever celebrity
status I may have had back then," he said. "I've always tried to be
well-anchored."
Jo Ann Mants, a school負eacher in Selma who was a teenage civil
rights protester in Georgia where she grew up, couldn't agree more,
saying: "A lot of prophets of old were not glorified, and Bob
certainly did not do what he did for any personal glory."
The two, who met in 1963 in Americus, Ga., have been married for 43
years and have three children, seven grandchildren and enough civil
rights memories to fill several books.
She has often suggested that her husband write his autobiography, and
now that he is working on one, she couldn't be happier.
"It was a very dangerous time for civil rights workers and their
families," she said. "You never knew whether you would live another
day at times. You were constantly looking over your shoulder. I
always worried about Bob when he went out at night to work on some
civil rights project."
Mants and Carmichael met for the last time in 1998. Instead of at the
little "Freedom House," it was inside Mants' large, attractive house
not far from the White Hall Town Hall.
Carmichael was dying of prostate cancer and, as the two old friends
began to talk, they reminisced about the time they helped to register
thousands of formerly disfranchised voters.
"He made me promise to write my book," Mants said. "He told me, 'You
are the only one who really knows the story about what we did in
Lowndes County.'"
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