Transcript of full Reginald Tuggle interview

REGINALD TUGGLE

My name is Reginald Tuggle, I'm pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church in Roosevelt , Long Island, and I'm the associate vice president for college relations at Nassau Community College. I was born in Denver, Colorado, and I'm 60 years old and now live in Glen Cove, New York.

Q. Tell us about what you did during the heyday of the civil rights movement. What were you involved in?

Tuggle: I got involved in the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s. And I was introduced to the notion when Dr. King came to our church, actually, in Denver, Colorado, Macedonia Baptist Church, and we had a pretty large church. He was our Men's Day speaker one year and we had a chance to meet with him afterward, to talk, do some Q&A. Even then he was a very prominent name nationally. When he came to the church, the church was filled to capacity. And so the way he talked, he talked about the issues. Prior to his coming, the black community in Denver was already pretty much engaged in the issues around civil rights: like voting, housing, jobs and social justice. And I remember churches in those days didn't worry about denominational affiliation. We worked pretty much as a community of one when it came to addressing voting issues. For example, I remember churches -- Methodist, AME, AME Zion, Baptist, Pentecostal -- [working] with the NAACP on polling days. We would create car pools and we would identify people who were shut-in, or who were elderly who didn't have cars, and we would go around and pick them up and [take them] into the polling places and wait for them to vote, and then take them back home again. And we would run cars back and forth all the time. I was in high school…I was one of those who wanted to participate and help to organize these kinds of things. We would do it through the church. Then later on, when I was a high school senior, there was a rally in Atlanta, Georgia. I said to my mother, 'I have to go to this rally.' And she says, 'Well, it's kind of far away' -- it's about a thousand miles' drive or so from Denver to Atlanta -- and I said, 'Mother, I need to go.' She understood what I wanted to do. So myself and three others, three others of us, we drove from Denver, Colorado, to Atlanta to participate in a rally led by Dr. [Martin Luther] King.

Of course in those days the issues were pretty consistent: voting rights, fair housing and having justice -- social and political justice. And all the rallies and all the speakers pretty much addressed those issues. I remember as a boy in high school in Denver going to rallies on the steps of the capital in Denver and having speakers speak on these issues. I remember one very powerful speaker...One of the last speakers to speak was a woman, I don't know her name. She was not that tall and the Afro was just coming into vogue in those days, it wasn't quite there, but those of us who wore Afros, we were considered radicals or rabble-rousers or nonconformists. She got up and she had this Afro…anyway, she got up to speak. In her speech, it was a fiery speech, I remember her saying at the end how we're tired of going to the back of the bus. We're tired of going to the back door of hotels and we're tired of being treated like second-class citizens, and we're tired of praying, too. And I knew what she meant by that, she meant we should become more activist in the whole notion of achieving human and civil rights. But as a young, aspiring preacher it caught me off guard, because our ancestry is filled with individuals that maybe they didn't have fancy homes, they didn't have the benefit of an education, they didn't have any social status, but they knew how to pray and they knew the Lord, and our community is rife with this whole thing called the religious experience. So, I believe that the God we serve, God is through a lot of the oppression and dehumanizing activities of the slavery movement. But also after that, the Jim Crow, the segregation. And when she got up to say we're tired of praying, too, I remember there was sort of a gasp in the audience when she said that. We all knew what she meant by that, but we also wish she quite hadn't said that.

But shortly after that there were two other names coming into play: Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, who also were more proactive. These were not church people. They were really in-your-face kind of social activists, as well as civil rights activists. And so they promoted the notion of doing more. At the same time, we had Malcolm X espousing we must achieve our liberation and our freedom by any means possible. So all these different voices being out there accompanying that of Dr. King was a real exciting time. I think, probably, it was the last time I remember the African-American community having a sense of common purpose. It was just around this time we had heard the news that Congress was caught up in this thing. There were all kinds of coalitions being shaped and formed with the blacks and the Jews working hand in hand and in marches.

There was this whole thing of liberal whites getting involved in marches and sit-in demonstrations. And there was a kind of civil rights euphoria, if you will. And then I remember clearly when Congress enacted the passing of the Voting Rights Act, I think it was either 1964 or 1965, I'm not sure which year, there was a major, major discussion in Denver, Colorado, regarding, 'We've done it, we've done it, the Voting Rights Act is passed and we can now exercise community influence at the polls. Preachers were preaching about this thing, about voting rights. Then right after that, or just before that, I'm not quite sure which year it was, because they were back-to-back years, the fair housing legislation passed. And we saw that as the beginning of the end of de facto segregation in the country. There was a lot of discussion about that, and people cheering and celebrating these achievements. And we saw that as maybe the sacrifice was paying off because, you know, in those days, mid-'60s and latter '60s, we still had fire hoses turned on people in the South. We still had…dogs snapping at people's loins. That was very vivid on evening news. So when we saw the knocking down of Jim Crowism, and the fact that Congress had finally recognized some of the efforts that Dr. King had been talking about, it came out of the line of human nature to change. Let's at least create laws to protect those who are disenfranchised.

Q. Let me go back to, give me some specific examples of the kinds of things that you as a high school student were able to do, how many marches you attended, where you attended…what years.

Tuggle: The activities that I was personally engaged in civil rights in those years and after. In high school I was working with our local pastor to help organize car pools to get people to the polls. I wasn't driving, I was just part of the effort, the committee…After high school, I went to a black college, Bishop College in Dallas Texas. There, we had the ongoing development of civil rights because in Dallas, Texas, as in much of the South, as in much of the country, the whole notion of civil rights was everywhere in the country. But on our campus, on a black campus, in those years you could not be on a black campus and not be involved in civil rights activities: rallies, discussions, which was a constant.

Since college, when I came to New York, I got involved in organizing tenant organizations in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where I pastored from 1969 to 1971. I was pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church in Asbury Park…among my duties was organizing tenant association groups, in large measure to fight against what was perceived to be, then, injustice to tenants who rented in projects because the racial makeup of those tenants was mostly 100 percent African-American. So we wanted to organize against practices by the landlord and landlord association...Primarily we weren't getting services. Things were not being repaired that should've been repaired, and so we organized…people were urged not to pay rent and to put the money in escrow…We were not trying to get out of paying rent, we were trying to get the landlord to be more responsive to needs of the tenants. So I was very much involved in that effort as a community organizer.

Of course I've made numerous speeches over the years, to black and white communities, on the topic of human rights and civil rights…In Texas, New Jersey and Long Island…As a pastor, as a community organizer, as an academic, it's not always easy to distinguish from among them. Many pastors are community activists, not all are, but many are. I happen to be one who is active in community organizing and community issues. When I'm introduced, I'm often introduced as pastor. I'm often introduced as director of college relations, or now as associate vice president for community relations --the roles overlap in that context -- but the common thread or the common focus has been the topic of my speeches, and that has been speaking out against social injustice and political impotency, social and economic inequity…The problems still remain, after all these years, they're still there.

Q. Can we move forward? When did you come to New York and what kind of activism was your focus on Long Island?

Tuggle: I came to New York in September 1973 when I was still a student at Yale University pursuing a PhD in the effects of corporate investments in Third World countries. And I was coming here, basically in those days on the weekend because I was in school during the week up in New Haven, Connecticut. Roosevelt is one of those communities on Long Island that is identified as a black community…When I arrived at Roosevelt, the racial mix was quite different than it is today. In 1965, long before I came to Roosevelt, it was basically a white community. By the time I arrived in 1973, the racial balance had already shifted to being an African-American community, and shortly after I arrived it became nearly 90 percent-plus African-American, which is pretty much the makeup today, although now we have more Hispanics living there than there were 30 years ago, and we have a few whites still living there, but primarily it's a community we would label as a minority community...

I remember in those early days we had to challenge the county and the town of Hempstead for services that other communities took for granted. For example, we didn't have a swimming pool for the youth, and a group of organizers got involved and went to the county executive and the town supervisor to finally give us a swimming pool, but that was an effort. It took an effort to do that. Other communities take youth centers for granted. We didn't have one.

When I came to Roosevelt one of the first things I did was organize some community forums…One was entitled "Political Impotency." That was talking about we had the right to vote, but many African-Americans were in fact not voting. So our impotency was almost self-imposed, in as much as we had the right to exercise the vote and we didn't do it, then we couldn't raise an argument when things didn't go your way and you didn't exercise your right to vote…Then we had another community forum titled "Taxation Without Representation." By that we meant we were paying taxes like everyone else but we didn't have the same kinds of services other communities had. For example, many streets in Roosevelt in 1973 did not have curb cuts…in front of the church I'm serving now, we didn't have curbs. We went to the town, county…now I don't think you can go anywhere in Roosevelt and not find curbs in front of homes…[he recalls a Newsday story on the making of a ghetto] I remember some of the answers coming from that. Part of it was blacks want to live among themselves, or we don't tell people where to live they just gravitate toward where they want to live. Then there were other stories about racial steering and about DSS steering people who were receiving social services to certain housing opportunities. It was rare to find a black public assistance recipient [steered] to a neighborhood that was not black...So we challenged that. I remembered going to the county executive with a group of other ministers, not just myself, but there were others from Roosevelt, Reverend Mackey…and others saying why is it you're sending people on public assistance to Roosevelt? Why not spread the load so that we don't become disproportionately impacted by huge numbers of people, not that we're opposed to having them, but we want to share that load…because they do present issues we need to address, like education and infrastructure issues.

Q. Was fear ever a factor? Were you afraid, and if so how did you cope with that fear?

Tuggle: In 1965 , fear was an issue. We overcame fear, first off by ignoring it to some degree. When we drove down to Atlanta from Denver, I remember going into Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it was one of those drive ins. In those days you would order a hamburger and get milkshakes, and they would bring the item out to the car and they would put a tray in your window and you'd eat in the car…while we were in Chattanooga, Tennessee, it was night. It was my turn to drive, as a matter of fact…as we were eating, in the restaurants the patrons inside came to the window and they were peering out at us, and the year before they had the three individuals in Mississippi, the three boys …were murdered, dismembered I think. So we had that image in our heads. And as we're eating, they're coming at the window and they're not saying nice things about us. And we notice as we're eating, other cars came into the …parking lot, they were yelling things at us -- nigger this, nigger that -- and they saw the license plate was Colorado so they knew we weren't local. And so we quickly…pulled out and as we pulled out of the parking lot of this eatery, a string of cars came out after. This was about midnight…a string of cars followed us out of the lot. We got to the highway. I remember one car getting in front of us and slowing down. A car got on the side of us, and there were a string of cars behind us. How many? Four or five cars behind us. And I remember being very frightened. And the others in the car, the three others in the car, they had their heads below the window line so they couldn't be shot at or hit, whatever. And they would come by and slow down to about 10 to 15 miles per hour on a 60 mile per hour or so speed limit. We were at their mercy and we couldn't stop, and we didn't dare pull over…they would drive by the car and take sticks and hit the car, they took a brick and threw it through the window of the car, shattering it ...nobody was injured, calling us everything but a child of God kind of thing. They harassed us I guess for 25 to 30 minutes…They just peeled away after that. I remember the fright , the worry. Fear? Yeah, we were very fearful because we didn't know what might happen during the course of that night...

[He tells of an incident outside Atlanta in a bowling alley they stopped at, but the manager said blacks were not allowed; the manager had a shotgun. He didn't point it at them but let them know the shotgun was there.]

Q. What was your proudest moment as it relates to your activism, your greatest accomplishment? And how would you like to be remembered?

Tuggle: I think my proudest moment was to see the achievement of a lot of us in the African-American community. I think [that] without those who came before us we wouldn't have today. I mean, I'm proud to see, whenever I see African- Americans who are CEOs of corporations, I'm proud to see us become presidents of organizations and banks, presidents of colleges and universities. When I see achievement made -- my own daughters, one is a doctor and one...is a marketing executive and another is at Tufts University in Boston - -when I see African-American judges and when I see them as mayors of cities and congressmen and we have one senator, I know that they didn't get there on their own. I know that all of those achievements were made possible because many nameless people paid the price with their lives and limbs to ensure that future generations would -- and by the way, I'm proud of the fact that even though my ancestors couldn't read, possibly, or maybe they didn't have a chance to go to a college when they were out at the civil rights rallies and when fire hoses were turned on them, or when they would walk down the street and they would be called these awful names, these epithets, they weren't fighting for their rights, I don't believe. I think they were fighting for their children yet unborn. They were fighting for a generation that would come after them because they knew that probably they wouldn't live long enough to see the achievements that I and others of my generation were able to see. And I think I'm proudest most of them, those who risked far more than I ever did. I never risked lynching to the extent that they did. I never was exposed to the same level of Jim Crowism that my ancestors had to go through, and they did it with such fierce courage, and I think I'm proudest of them and their willingness to fight for me and my generation and those who came up after me.

Q. How do you think history will regard the generation of activism that you are a part of?

Tuggle: I think history will regard my generation as one that was purposeful and united for a common cause and direction. We knew that we had to work together. We had no illusions that if we did not work together we would not be successful. I think one of the great distractions of our age was when Lyndon Baines Johnson, on national television, when he signed the Voting Rights Act and very similar legislation for housing and executive order 11246, affirmative action, I think that was the beginning of the demise of the civil rights movement, because what it said to many: We had arrived, we don't have to fight as hard. We don't have to risk as much and we took our eyes off of our children, and looking out after them. As much as I'm grateful for the legislation that was passed, I'm disheartened to think that there are those of us who think we have arrived, when reality on Long Island is we still have de facto segregation, we have, throughout the country, we have many, many examples of racist practices and systemic racism as it reflects in our courts, we have 2 million people in jail, nationally, a million of them are African-Americans; that's about half of those in jail. I do not believe in my heart that we produce half of America's crime. I just don't believe that. We're far less than that number in the percentage of our population. We have public schools that are failing in the inner city, where many in our community live. We have examples today of practices that are harmful to people of color. And what I don't see today is leadership, united in a common way, or having a common agenda to achieve some of these, some solutions or remedies to these problems. We're pretty much going our own separate ways, and I would hope that at some point there could be some recognition of a common agenda, or a common purpose. And then to work more collaboratively to overcome some of these issues. Right now it's not present.

[Why he became involved] I wanted to be part of the solution. She [his mother] instilled in me this notion that you have to challenge injustice whenever you find it.

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