[NARRATOR:] In 1957, John Cashin returned home
to Huntsville, Alabama after military service.
He and his new bride, Joan Cashin, were eager to attack the segregation
that restricted the lives of African American residents.
Federal money had been pouring into Huntsville
for U.S. military munitions since 1941.
With the arrival of NASA in 1960,
a new boom was underway.
White city leaders were concerned that the growing civil rights movement
could influence NASA to leave town.
Cashin and other black leaders saw Huntsville’s dependence on federal money
as a vulnerability they could exploit to integrate the city.
[CASHIN:] Once President Kennedy announced this moonshot challenge,
Huntsville was a boomtown
because of the space industry.
[NARRATOR:] Aerospace contractors like IBM and Boeing
became important to the local economy.
[ODOM:] As NASA's presence here increased,
contractors moving in represented another major investment, locally.
[DENEEFE:] The opportunities that NASA provided
depended on who you were and what you could do.
If you were a white man with an engineering degree
you could get a job like that.
If you were African American in Huntsville,
your choices were going to be a lot more limited.
By the 1960s Huntsville was a city that, I would say, was like two societies in one.
[MILAN:] We were kept from going to white businesses,
places where you eat,
restaurants, cafes, movies.
We didn't have equal rights to do things
and something had to change.
[ODOM:] Very early on
the leadership of the Huntsville civil rights movement
understood that they needed support,
they needed to build a network.
[NARRATOR:] In January 1962,
local African American leaders created the Community Service Committee,
or CSC,
to organize residents against segregation.
[ODOM:] The leadership of the community service committee was Dr. John Cashin,
Dr. Sonnie Hereford
and Reverend Ezekiel Bell.
[NARRATOR:] The CSC began its nonviolent campaign with sit-ins at downtown lunch counters.
[DAILEY:] We went every day.
It was kind of like a job.
We met at churches.
And we would just go out.
And march around at all the stores.
My sister was in college at the time
and she would get arrested two and three times a day.
I was 13 years old when I started sitting in
and I was probably one of the very few people that young at that time.
[NARRATOR:] Hundreds of demonstrators participated in the protests.
Huntsville police were under orders to arrest demonstrators
but avoid the violence that had marked civil rights protests
across Alabama and the south.
The CSC hoped the daily spectacle of arrests would draw national attention to Huntsville
and put pressure on city government to desegregate,
but their activism failed to attract adequate media coverage.
[CASHIN:] You would not have known that every single day
there were young people getting themselves arrested
at stores in downtown Huntsville
based on reading the news.
[NARRATOR:] To put the white establishment on the defensive,
John Cashin employed theatrical tactics.
[ODOM:] Cashin was somebody who knew how to keep people off-guard
and he knew strategically where to strike at one time.
[CASHIN:] He called it the Committee on Psychological Warfare,
and they would come up with things to do
to try to advance their movement
and ruffle the feathers of white supremacists.
[NARRATOR:] To ratchet up the pressure on city leaders,
the CSC brought in someone influential.
My father Sonnie Hereford III invited Dr. King to Huntsville
as part of the committee activities
in order to reignite some of the enthusiasm.
[NARRATOR:] King’s speech at Oakwood College on March 19 was standing room only.
[DAILEY:] Hearing him speak was overwhelming.
[ODOM:] Martin Luther King's visit here
had basically put the establishment on high alert.
If Martin Luther King is showing up, national attention can't be far behind.
[NARRATOR:] The turning point would come in April—
when Joan Cashin and Martha Hereford agreed to an unusual plan
hatched with their husbands.
[CASHIN:] The idea was to have an 8 months pregnant doctor's wife
and a dentist’s wife holding a four-month-old baby.
That they would get themselves arrested at a lunch counter instead of college students.
They refused to post bail in order to go to jail.
She took me with her to jail,
a four-month-old baby.
[DENEEFE:] And the fact of having a pregnant woman
and a mother with a small child in jail
finally got the signal outside of Huntsville.
[NARRATOR:] After months of activism,
the civil rights demonstrators were finally making the national news.
To keep the pressure on,
Cashin’s Psychological Warfare Committee
brought the Huntsville civil rights struggle to Wall Street.
In May, demonstrators picketed and passed out flyers at the New York Stock Exchange.
They warned traders against investing in contractors who did business in Huntsville.
The strategy of protesting the stock exchange
brought national attention to the movement here in Huntsville
but it was also targeted in line with their overall strategy:
attack the weak point.
If something were to go wrong here, Huntsville loses that federal investment.
[NARRATOR:] The CSC sent copies of the demonstrators’ divestment handbills
to Huntsville Mayor R.B. Searcy.
With national attention at its height, the city government of Huntsville had to respond.
That summer, on July 9, 1962, desegregation of Huntsville’s lunch counters began.
It was really something!
Just the thought that we could go into those movie theaters was a lot for us
and the restaurants.
[NARRATOR:] The Mayor made sure the police were present in case of violence.
Here was Huntsville, Alabama, desegregated public accommodations
two full years before the Civil Rights Act was passed,
a year before water hoses were turned on the children of Birmingham.
The people who were the deciders in that city,
what they cared about was making money.
And the image of the city particularly after the moonshot race.
[NARRATOR:] The strategy of the committee paid off.
Huntsville was the first city in Alabama to begin integration.
With the CSC, John and Joan Cashin won their first victory against segregation.