(upbeat music) - (Narrator) Illinois Stories is brought to you by The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Hello.

Welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Springfield, where a gift from a friend about three years ago turned into what you see here now.

A civil rights museum.

We're in the Springfield home of Aaron Pearl and Aaron is a middle-aged guy from Springfield - Yes sir.

- Who is absolutely engaged in the civil rights movement.

But you weren't always like that, were you?

It's kind of a recent thing.

- Yes, sir.

What happened was I started collecting buttons.

And all the buttons, I kept collecting buttons and a good friend of mine, Clint Hamlin, local guy here from Springfield, went to a show and on the show he brought me a poster and the poster was, BE VICTORIOUS AS HE VOTE NOV. 8 - Okay.

- With Dr. King on there.

And at first, when he gave me the poster I was like, "What am I gonna do with it?"

(laughs) And I sat on it and sat on it.

And I said, "Well, Hey, I need to frame this poster because this poster is history."

And after I framed this poster, as you could see from my collection, it became an addiction because it just made me want to look for more and more things dealing with the civil rights movement.

And I've always wanted to preserve history because history is something that you shouldn't keep for yourself.

You're supposed to keep passing it on from generation to generation.

So, this poster here was the beginning of the collection that you see on the wall.

I have many other pieces that I have bought from auction houses, from other collection houses.

That what the pandemic, I'm still waiting on them to get into my hands where I can actually frame them.

But this is just the beginning of a collection that's less than three years old.

- Like you say, it's history and it's a remarkable.

It's been about 50 years now since this history, the civil rights history began to be written.

- Yes - And you've got a good chunk of it, don't you?

- Yes, sir.

- Let's look over here.

Cause this is fascinating.

This may be the most rare piece in your collection right here.

This pennant from the March on Washington when Dr. King- This was I have a dream speech, is that where this pennant is from?

- Yes, sir - And that's the original.

You had to be at that event to get a pennant like this.

- Yes, sir.

What happened was, we were in the process of purchasing the home that we're in right now.

And we had already purchased it and I had to get some painting done for the people that purchased our old home.

In the process of that, the guy that painted our house I said, "Hey", I showed him just my button collection and showed him this button right here, the March on Washington.

Which is the [Indistinct] piece from that March on 1963.

And I said, "Hey, I just wanna show you some of the things that I've been collecting."

And he says to me, he says, "Hey, I got something that will match that."

I'm like, "Oh, okay."

Didn't think nothing else about it.

Until once again, I tell a good friend of mine, Clint Hamlin about it.

I said, "Clint, the guy says he has a pennant."

I said, "What do you think I should offer him?"

He says, "Whatever you do, you let him make the first first offer to you.

Don't you just jump up there."

I said, "Okay."

(laughs) In the process, the guy calls me two days later and he says, "Hey, are you still interested in this pennant?"

And I was like, "Sure."

I leave.

My wife was upset cause she's like, "Where are you going to, it's 9:30 at night."

I can't tell her that I've bought another piece of civil rights because all this stuff that you've seen on the wall, our old home didn't have this much space.

So I had it hid underneath beds, behind dressers.

And when she would start to clean, she's like, "Where's all this stuff coming from."

So when I go to see it that night, I was like, "Wow."

And it was glued onto a dry board.

And I said, "Well, how am I gonna be able to get this off?"

That whole night I couldn't go to sleep.

I stayed up all night trying to figure out how I was gonna be able to get it off that dry board without tearing it.

In the process, I [Indistinct] googled a guy and his name was Dave Borland here in Springfield.

He's the Winchester framing.

I take it to Dave, I said, "Hey Dave, what can we do?

Do you think you can get off this dry board?"

He says, "I can get it off."

In the process of him taking it off, what he ends up doing he keeps it for like several weeks.

Once he gets it off the dry board, he makes the frame and we put the button and the pin it in there.

And if you notice that the frame is black and white.

And that's to show the unity of the races.

And from this, from this here, not only was it the March on Washington for jobs and freedom, but it was also the right to vote.

- Well, Aaron we were talking about that day in Washington that I Have a Dream speech and the day when hundreds of thousands showed up.

And this is what the spirit would have felt like?

- Oh yes.

When you sit back and you look at it as people just walking for the right.

Marching for the right for jobs, freedom, the right to vote.

And the thing is, it wasn't just a black issue.

They said it was probably at the time that the most people that had ever been in DC Cause it span from the Lincoln monument all the way to the Washington monument.

And if you've ever been in DC, that's a heck of a stretch.

And you had people like James Garner, Marlon Brando, Diahann Carroll, Harry Belafonte, Mahalia Jackson.

All these were superstars that came to attend this event.

And when I think about the March on Washington it also makes me think about Mahalia Jackson because when Dr. King was getting ready to give the speech, he wasn't gonna give it.

And Mahalia told him, she was a great gospel singer.

She says, "No, you have to give the speech Martin."

So while he's up there, Mahalia is setting maybe a row underneath Dr. King while he's giving a speech.

Sammy Davis Jr. is right there.

And all you can hear Mahalia Jackson saying in the background is, "Tell them about the dream, tell them about the dream."

And that's when the speech, the great piece on the March on Washington when he gave a speech, "I have with dream" So, when I sat back and I looked at it, I said to myself, I said, "What would my role have been as a young male?

What I have been able to attain this."

And so it's like taking yourself back in the time.

When you come into this [Indistinct] of ours, it's like the African-American museum, the [Indistinct] in DC.

I'm gonna take you back into time.

And it's not something to make you be mad at it but it's just to let you see how far we've come but yet how far we still need to go.

- We talked about causes, but legislation had to happen.

- Yes - And legislation is still happening.

And there's still things going on.

LBJ, he had a lot of detractors and he was a hero to a lot of people, but he got it done.

Didn't he?

- Yes.

And the thing about LBJ and I've often said this, we talk about how great of a president John F. Kennedy was.

To be honest, LBJ pushed forward when JFK was pushing but he didn't wanna ruffle the feathers of a lot of people.

So if you look at the legislation that LBJ passed during his time in office outside of the civil rights, all the legislation that he passed for people in general, he would have went down as one of the greatest presidents.

- Yeah.

- Only thing I heard LBJ was the Vietnam war.

But then when you start to talk about legislation, it makes me think about even today.

When Al Sharpton once said, he says, "We protested, we have demonstration, well in order, after we demonstrate we have to have legislation."

And so, This is showing great minds coming together in the oval office to hash out the passage of the civil rights bill that was passed in 1965.

We're actually today, we're 56 years from the passage of that bill.

- These fellows had a lot to do with it.

Didn't they?

Of course, they're gathered around look like a banquet table here but these were who you called The Big Six.

- The Big Six.

This was The Big Six of the civil rights movement.

You have a young John Lewis, you have a Whitney Young, you have A. Phillip Randolph, Dr. King, James Farmer and Roy Wilkins.

These guys came together to work together to get the civil rights passage, the bill passed.

- Well, let's move down here.

Cause it was pretty unpleasant for a lot of folks.

We mentioned John, help me out here.

- John Lewis.

- John Lewis.

And I guess this, is this him here crossing the bridge?

- Yes, sir.

- Okay.

Tell us about that occasion.

- Well, when John Lewis, just for the right to vote, we're talking 1965 for the right to vote.

We knew as African-Americans that in order for us to even have a chance in this world that we had, the power was in the word vote, V-O-T-E. We understood that.

So, they marched from Montgomery Alabama to Selma, roughly 57 miles.

And they were picking people up along the way to join the March.

So when they get to Selma Alabama and cross the bridge, the Alabama state troopers stopped them and say, "Hey, don't go no further.

Don't go no further."

And they wanted them to turn back around and they gave them a two minute warning.

John Lewis was like, in the back of his mind, I'm thinking personally he was like, "I'm not turning back around."

That turned out to an event of them not turning around for them standing up and fighting.

And it was often referred to as "Bloody Sunday" - Here's another picture here of them coming down and you see the law enforcement officers are waiting for them.

They've given them two minutes.

And if they don't observe the two minutes, this is what's gonna happen.

- (Aaron) Yes, sir.

This was also during the time period where not only were they putting dogs on African-Americans, they were beating them with batons but also holding them down this way.

And these are young students that just wanted the right to vote.

These were what I would call, today's game-changers.

- Okay.

Let's take a look at some of these buttons.

(laughs) These go all over the board, don't they?

- Yes.

Yes.

- Show me some of your favorites.

- Well, when you sit back and you look at it I think of these two buttons, Stand Up Keep Fighting and Through Their Eyes.

And the reason why is because the buttons that I have collected through their eyes, these people knew that it could be a better world that we just had to fight for it.

And they didn't mind.

They knew that they were gonna have some people have to give up something in order to- for the next generation to move forward.

And for them, they gave up themselves.

So when I look at these buttons I also look at one of my favorite buttons is the SCLC button which is a Southern Christian Leadership Council.

And the reason why that button has so much meaning to me is because my uncle, Carl Farris was very active in the SCLC.

He was very active in the civil rights movement.

Carl Farris became active because his first cousin, A young man by the name of Isaac Farris and Isaac Farris married Dr. King's sister, Christina King.

So they were very active in the civil rights movement.

But then also look at the button right here.

When you look at the Meredith Mississippi March for freedom, then I look at another button a little bit underneath it which just says, "Mayor Charles Evers inauguration" Charles Evers was the younger brother of Medgar Evers who was killed in 1963. Who was very prominent and very active in the civil rights movement.

- Okay.

So he then became, was it the Mayor of Fayette Mississippi?

That what he became, Okay.

- Yes, sir.

- There's some other interesting buttons in here and let's see, where's the one I'm looking for?

Oh, stop lynching.

- (Aaron) Yes.

Stop the lynching was the button that came from the NAACP.

And it came out of the race riots here in Springfield, Illinois.

It was really NAACP was formed after the race riots.

- The legal defense fund.

So they were selling buttons to raise money for a legal defense fund.

- Yes, sir.

- Okay.

- And believe it or not, this button they were selling back for five cents.

I got a lot of fives [Indistinct] (both laughing) And the buttons that you look like they are all original time period buttons.

So it was like with that, you sit back and think about it.

They were raising money for legal funds because people were still getting lynched.

In that order, [Indistinct] directly underneath it.

I looked at another thing and it comes back to what we have fought for for years as African-Americans, the right to vote because voter suppression still happens even today.

And the button here that you see is, Pay Your Poll Tax Today, and the self, as African-American you had to pay a tax and be able to pass a test in order to vote.

And so to make sure that you paid your tax to be able to vote, they have these buttons just to remind the people, make sure you pay your tax so you will have the right to vote.

- Now that was in 1964 civil rights act.

That was all swept away.

Isn't that right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

Now Bobby Rush, congressman for years, what's fascinating about this button is the fact that Barack Obama had something to do with it, didn't he?

- Yes.

(laughs) Bobby Rush is the only candidate that ever beat Barack Obama in an election (laughs).

- In the race for the 2nd ward Democratic Councilman.

is what it was for.

Huh?

- Yes, yes.

- (laughs) Okay.

Well, things change, don't they?

- Yes.

And then when you look at the snip buttons the student nonviolent coordinator.

- Can you point that out for us.

- Which would be these buttons here.

- Oh, okay.

SNCC.

- SNCC.

Those bugs.

If you ever watched the movie "Mississippi Burning" where the three young men went to get African Americans registered to vote, That's what they were a part of.

So once again, what's the common denominator?

It was for the right to vote.

Because we understood through protesting, demonstration.

We also understood that legislation was gonna be the only way that we could possibly make a change in this world.

- Well, in the power of the vote, you're kind of convinced that the power of the vote is where the power is.

And if you can give the power or keep the power of the vote, then you can make changes.

But without it you can't change anything.

And this young man we're looking at over here has a lot in common with this young man here and this is considerably later.

Maybe two generations later.

- Yes, The picture over there was the young man in 1965.

This is a young man in 2021.

Roughly 56 years after that picture was taken and we're still fighting for the same thing.

And then if you look at this picture, the guy got a vote on his forehead.

This young man is holding a sign saying, "Future voters."

(laughs) And we understand that, when we're dealing with votes that sometimes the vote is suppressed.

And we know that it was tried to be suppressed in Georgia, was suppressed with Stacey Abrams who could have won a head ref for any other office and became an elected official.

But Stacy Abrams was a game changer and a visionary.

And she put a plan together to turn the state of Georgia blue, which was a red state.

So, when you sit back and you look at it, young people holding up signs, because we do know that the youth are the future.

But we also know that there are a lot more youth than there are adults.

And if you can get them out to vote, they can become a changer because by getting them out to vote in Georgia where this picture was taken at, they were able to turn the state back to blue and a young named Raphael Warnock became a senator in Georgia.

- Yep.

Yep.

Okay.

This man, was his name Cassius Clay at one time?

- (Aaron) Yes.

- (Mark) When he was an Olympic boxer.

And I think even maybe part of his pro career.

Changed things around, didn't he?

- (Aaron) Yes, he did.

- (Mark) He suffered for it too, didn't he?

- Yes, he did.

In order to make change, you have to give up some things.

And I think about this picture here when I look at it, Cassius clay as a young man, probably 20, 21, 22 years old.

For a boxer you don't get to box that long because too many left hooks in jabs kind of wears you down.

But he decided not to go to Vietnam because like he said, he didn't believe in the Vietnam war.

Well before the Vietnam war, he was also a big advocate for the civil rights movement.

So in this picture here, how I put it in the frame you notice in 1964 he's Cassius Clay.

He was banned from boxing, not only because he was very active and outspoken about the civil rights movement, because he didn't care for the treatments of African-Americans during that time period, but he refused to go fight in the Vietnam war.

So he comes back six years later in 1970 not as Mohammad Ali, I mean, not as Cassius clay but he comes back as Muhammad Ali.

- Yup.

And actually he still had a good hand in changing the world.

- Yes, he did.

- He was a very, very effective person.

There's a really needle poster right there of him right there.

And over our right here.

Here it is in 1968 life magazine Frederick Douglass of course had been dead for a long, long time.

- Yes.

- But this just goes to show how influential he was during his life.

He was of course alive during the civil war and still even then in 1968, he was still considered very influential.

Okay.

The whole idea of slavery, a lot of people, of course wouldn't believe some of these photographs that you have on the wall.

The slave auctions and the places in town where they held slave auctions in the South.

This one is a very disturbing image right here.

And this was on life magazine in 1956.

People alive probably were not even aware that, that had gone on.

- (Aaron) Yes.

When you look at that picture it's just amazing because Life Magazine during that time period was a prominent magazine.

- (Mark) Oh, yeah.

- And it wasn't a prominent magazine for African-American people.

This was actually a white magazine.

So for what you're seeing to make the cover on Life Magazine, somebody on life magazine noticed that, Hey, first history needed to be told and there needed to be some changes.

So we do not go back into that fall back into what we fell back into.

- Here's a good picture from- I guess this is just before the civil war.

But this is out of Atlanta.

Is that right?

- (Aaron) Yes, Atlanta, Georgia.

- (Mark) Yeah.

And look at the sign auction and Negro sales.

- (Aaron) Yes.

And what's amazing when you look at it and have it be like a mom and pops type store and at the top of it, it says, "China glass Queensware" When at the bottom it says, "Auction and Negro cells" - (Mark) Well, this picture on the left Aaron, it's just heartbreaking.

Who's this poor young man?

- (Aaron) Well, this picture that you're seeing on the left is Medgar Evers' wife consoling her son at his father's funeral, Medgar Evers [Indistinct] was killed.

- (Mark) And then you had juxtapose it with Coretta Scott King.

- (Aaron) Yes, because what was ironic about this was six years later after the assassination of Medgar Evers, Dr. King was assassinated.

Let me correct myself.

Five years later.

- Five years later.

Yeah.

And again, life magazine, recording our history.

- Yes.

- And here's another heartbreaking photo.

- And when you see this that says, "Negroes in the city, the cry that will be heard" And we knew that even though the civil rights pass wasn't 1965 like we stated earlier, legislation doesn't mean that just because it's passed everything is gonna go.

- (Mark) That's for sure.

- So there was still a lot of work that had to be done and you still had a lot of people that were saying, "Hey, we thought it was gonna be this way and it's still not this way.

We're still dealing with the same situations that we were dealing with."

So The Life Magazine, put this on the cover of March 8th, 1968.

Less than four weeks later, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

- And you've got that right there.

Life magazine again, week of shock.

- Yes.

Yes.

And you know, it's really weird because I think about it.

I'm too young, even though I wasn't even in existence I was born June 30th of 1968.

So this was just before my birth.

But I mean, it's like, I sit back and I say to myself, even with my mother being an African-American woman with kids and I'm thinking of everything that she dealt with.

And then I think about my wife's family, my wife it was 12 of them in her family.

Her mom and dad moved here from Mississippi just to have a better chance in life.

And like we said before, it always comes down to the vote.

We sit back Mark and we think about African-Americans have protested, will demonstrate.

But now we have to get into the legislation.

We have to get legislation passed in order to change some things that's happening in the world.

When the legislation is passed, doesn't mean that it's gonna make a difference that day but we have to work on making a difference.

- Let's move on.

Now, this was the Chicago Sun Times on the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated.

- (Aaron) Yes, yes.

- This is the headline?

This is the front page?

- (Aaron) Yes, sir.

- And then you flip, was this the back page or the flip side of the front page?

- (Aaron) That's the back page.

- (Mark) The back page.

- (Aaron) And what I did with this is this here is two pages, two newspapers.

Nothing has ever been taken out of anything on the wall.

Everything that you see is, everything is if it's a magazine it's the whole complete magazine, just not the cover.

And it was just weird to say that they put Martin Luther King slang.

Then they put the photo on the back side.

And then it says, "Murdered in Memphis" - And this is really precious too because these are- You had to be there at the funeral service to be able to get your hands on one of these programs.

This is his funeral service.

The first one at that the Ebenezer Baptist church.

- (Aaron) Yes.

- And then you have a second one over here.

I didn't even know there was a second service.

But what's that one there?

- The second service, if you look at the original eulogy and where it says Ebeneezer Baptist church, that was at two o'clock because Dr. King attended and graduated Morehouse college in Atlanta Georgia, a black HBCU for all males.

So Dr. King, they had a service from- at two o'clock that afternoon at Morehouse college.

The [Indistinct] program from his funeral came from a lady named Bernita Bennette.

She was the assistant to Correta Scott King, after Dr. King had passed.

And this came up for sale in an auction house.

And that's how I was able to get a copy of it.

It's all authentic.

So, and then like you say, you had to be there to be able to get one.

- (Mark) And then right below, what is this?

- (Aaron) What you're seeing is what is called a founding sponsor.

And when they built the King Memorial in DC, so many people were able to sponsor to getting it up off the ground and getting it built.

And this is how they rewarded them.

And I just happened to be on eBay one day.

And I seen this come across on eBay.

- (Mark) Wow.

- And I could not believe that it was on eBay.

I was like, somebody is getting ready to give this up.

This is a part of history.

And I said to myself, I said, "Why not bring this history here to Springfield?

Why not bring it here?"

Like I said, as you walk around and you look at what's on the walls, I got stuff coming in, still waiting on it to get here.

All my stuff coming from DC seems to be on hold.

I said, but the one thing, the wife and I, my wife Annie and I decided we're, that when the Lord calls us to greener pastures, all this that I have collected is gonna go to the African-American museum in DC.

- (Mark) That's wonderful.

That's wonderful.

- Let's break for that [Indistinct] - So why not bring it to Springfield?

- I wanna bring it to springfield.

- Well, like he said, like Aaron said, some of these things were already been acquired and because of the pandemic, he hasn't been able to get them delivered yet.

But as you can see, there's some more wall space here and I have a feeling it's gonna fill up pretty quick with another Illinois story in Springfield.

I am Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - (Narrator) Illinois stories is brought to you by The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

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