A Freewheelin' Time by Suze Rotolo Read Free Book Online Page B

segregation in the schools. On Saturdays and sometimes after school during the week some friends and I started working as volunteers for the march.

    Bayard Rustin, from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was a coordinator of the march and ran the Harlem headquarters of the organization at 312 West 125th Street. To us, a young group of mainly white student volunteers from left-wing backgrounds, Rustin was an imposing and elegant figure, a taskmaster and an educator. Our jobs were to get signatures on a petition demanding an end to segregation and to help raise money for and spread the word about the upcoming march. At the Harlem headquarters I’d meet up with George Auerbach and the other kids, and we’d break up into groups and choose neighborhoods in which to go knocking on doors.
    George and I and a few others decided to go to the theater district and wait at the stage door for Sidney Poitier, who was starring in Lorraine Hansberry’s play
A Raisin in the Sun.
When he came out, we ran up to him rattling our cans and explaining our mission. He was gracious, but as he dropped coins in each of our cans, he told us: Oh, man, I have given so much already.
    Students from all over the country came to this first youth march on Washington. It was thrilling to be one of ten thousand young people, black and white, who marched from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial. A small delegation led by Harry Belafonte attempted to deliver a petition to President Eisenhower, but they were not successful. The march itself was a success, if only because it inspired all of us who were part of it to continue to work for civil rights. We just knew that the next march would be even bigger and more successful. And the next one, in April 1959, was bigger, and soon there were the Freedom Rides and the sit-ins in the South. By the time the third and most recognized march on Washington was held in August of 1963, there were more than a hundred thousand people. This march, along with Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, pushed the agenda of civil rights forever into the national consciousness.
    As the civil rights movement gained momentum, my friends and I picketed the nationwide chain store Woolworth’s, which had segregated lunch counters in the South. While we marched in front of stores around the city, we handed out information to passersby, informing them of the chain’s policy down South and of the sit-ins that were taking place at the lunch counters. We would try to deter potential customers from going in to shop or to eat at any Woolworth’s. One Saturday my aunt walked out of a store, mortified that she had crossed a picket line, albeit unwittingly since she had gone in before we showed up. She joined the line for a little while and I felt very proud.
             
    A t Bryant High School I eventually discovered a core group of kids who were politically involved with the world around them, and what I perceived as two different worlds suddenly had more in common with each other than I ever expected.
    A boy I had known since elementary school was an outsider like me. He was well liked but known as a “fairy nice boy.” He played the piano and sang wonderfully. He was smarter than anyone else and was a lot of fun to be with. We were soul mates and ended up going to the senior class prom together. Even though he was nearly a head shorter than me, and queer, we were a great couple.
    I began to wear black most of the time and I had my ears pierced at an earring store on West Eighth Street in the Village. After my ears healed I removed the little gold hooks and made a pair of earrings out of copper wire and bits of leather. I cultivated a French accent and used it whenever anyone I didn’t know spoke to me or if I was in a store buying something. One day when I was riding home on the bus a young man sat next to me and attempted to start a conversation. I knew he thought I was exotic. This was Queens in the late