Dr. Charles Prickett will never forget the day he met the most iconic figure of the Civil Rights Movement.
The day after the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, Santa Rosa Junior College had the privilege of inviting Civil Rights activist and former SRJC employee Charles Prickett to the Bertolini Student Center to share with students his experience in meeting the Reverend Dr. King.
Dr. Pricket was a member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a leading organization of the Civil Rights Movement that played a major role in sit-ins and freedom rides. He participated in several historical events, including the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama and the 1963 March on Washington, where he heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Prickett was only 19 when he took a 24-hour long bus ride from his hometown of Carbondale, Ill. to the nation’s capital on that hot day in August.
“The temperature and humidity were in the 90s, and there was solid people from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument – people as far as the eye could see,” he said. “The atmosphere was charged with love and understanding. I felt like I was with close friends and family. Everyone was on the same page. It’s a feeling I had never experienced in my life – such solidarity, such compassion.”
The following year, Prickett participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer, a historic campaign to register as many African American voters in Mississippi as possible.
Mississippi had historically excluded blacks from voting through an unfair registration procedure that required them to fill out a 21 question form, as well as having to interpret any one of 285 randomly chosen sections of the state constitution. This, of course, had to be done to the satisfaction of a white registrar. Though the Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it did significantly affect the course of the Civil Rights movement.
In addition to organizing voter registration in the summer of 1964, Prickett would also help establish voluntary schools for black children called “Freedom Schools.”
“We created Freedom Schools to try to bridge the gap. My own hometown of Carbondale was still segregated, and this is 10 years after Brown v. the Board of Education. Black schools were sectioned four months out of the year, white schools: 9 months out of the year. Those children were working the other five months in the cotton fields. I picked cotton with them,” Prickett said.
It was the following year, during the Selma-Montgomery Marches of 1965, that young Charles Prickett had the opportunity to meet the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Prickett tells the story of being introduced to Dr. King by his hometown friend, Chuck Neblin. That day, Neblin and Prickett had the idea to put a stack of bumper stickers on the police cruisers of Selma. It was while they were out looking for squad cars on that warm, spring day in Alabama that they saw Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. walking alone down the steps of Brown’s Chapel.
‘“Hey, do you want to meet Martin?’” Neblin asked Prickett. Neblin then yelled to King, “Hey Martin, I want you to meet my friend.”
Dr. King approached the two and conversation ensued – not about the achievements of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and world figure Martin Luther King Jr. – but rather, a friendly inquisition by King to Prickett about his service to the movement.
“I’m 20 years old, and this is the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. I wanted to hear what he had to say, because he’s the man with the answers – he’s the icon. But he didn’t want to say anything,” Prickett said. “He plied me with questions. We stood there in the street for 30 minutes. He wanted to know what strategies I used during my time in Mississippi.”
Prickett was honored by Dr. King’s interest in his service to the Civil Rights Movement.
“I was your age and I felt at ease with this man. I felt like telling him things that we did that worked to change our society. He wanted to hear from me, a 20-year-old college student.” Prickett said. “That’s the kind of man he was. After that, he went back into Brown’s Chapel. Chuck and I left and found the cruisers, and put bumper stickers on every one we could find.”
After the presentation, Dr. Prickett took questions from the crowd. One student asked if we should meet the Gay Rights movement with the same vigor of the 1960s.
“It’s the same thing,” Prickett said. “Take no prisoners. Do not take no for an answer. Stand up for your rights, stand up for everyone’s rights, always.”