INTERRUPTED MELODY: THE 1956 ATTACK ON NAT "KING" COLE

Alabama Heritage, Winter 2004 by Sprayberry, Gary S

In the back of the Birmingham Municipal Auditorium, a small group of men huddled in the darkness, awaiting a signal. In a matter of moments Nat "King" Cole's muchanticipated performance would come to an abrupt and violent halt.

SECURITY FOR THE NAT "KING" COLE concert was unusually tight on April 10,1956. Warned in advance of possible violence erupting during the show, Birmingham police officers presented a highly conspicuous front in and around the Birmingham Municipal Auditorium. Backstage, where Cole and the other performers readied themselves for the show, the mood was grim. "I told Nat something was going to happen," said Carl Carruthers, Cole's road manager. "I tried to get him to cancel." But the singer could not be dissuaded. "We were warned ... that there was going to be trouble," said drummer Lee Young, "but most musicians are very positive people. I knew that there might be trouble, but I'm with [Nat], so I wasn't going to say I'm not going ... so we all went."

At approximately seven o'clock, Cole strode onto the stage, "separated from the white musicians by a light curtain intended to soften the impact of Caucasians and African-Americans appearing on the same platform," and was greeted by waves of eager applause. Backed by Ted Heath and his "Famous British Orchestra," he acknowledged the audience warmly, then launched into his first song, "Autumn Leaves." By the time Cole got to his third number, "Little Girl," several audience members noticed a commotion in the back of the auditorium. There, a small group of men huddled in the darkness, awaiting a signal. The much-anticipated Nat "King Cole" concert, which had drawn thousands of music fans from across Alabama, was about to come to an abrupt and violent halt.

THE MEN WHO LURKED in the shadows that night represented the last gasps of life of a dying organization. Reactions to the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case, which mandated the desegregation of all public schools, had spawned the development of the White Citizens' Council movement. Originating in Indianola, Mississippi, in July 1954, the councils had spread like a brush fire over Mississippi and Alabama. Unlike Klansmen, council members supposedly eschewed violence, choosing instead to combat desegregation through the court system and with economic pressure.

Council leadership in Alabama's Black Belt fell to a forty-four-year-old Macon County planter named Sam Engelhardt. But in the central and northern sections of the state-along Alabama's industrial corridor and in counties where blacks had historically made up a very small part of the population-Asa "Ace" Carter held sway over the movement. Born and reared in the east Alabama town of Oxford, the Navy veteran and ex-radio deejay had fashioned a career out of controversy and race baiting. After losing his job at Birmingham station WILD in 1955 for making numerous anti-Semitic remarks over the air, Carter began organizing chapters of the North Alabama Citizens' Council (NACC) across the northern half of the state. His fiery oration, counterbalanced by his down-home demeanor, helped draw in thousands of recruits to the organization-each one looking to forestall the social and cultural changes that had been unleashed after the second World War. "We cannot be self-centered, nor filled with self-importance," he would tell his followers. "There is too little time; there is too much to do; there is too vicious an enemy."

With Engelhardt and Carter at the helm, the council movement grew exponentially. On February 10, 1956, they held a massive rally in Montgomery to protest the recent admission of a black student named Authentic Lucy to the University of Alabama. More than twelve thousand people, representing a cross section of southern society, were drawn to the event. "They filed in the coliseum doors in long lines, millionaires mingling with farmers, as many women as men, all with eager looks on their faces like people going to a Billy Graham revival," noted one reporter. Amidst "rebel yells" and "thunderous applause," some of the South's leading segregationists paraded across the stage. The message they brought with them was nothing short of apocalyptic. "Unless we present an organized Southern front, we are going to be crushed," declared Senator James Eastland of Mississippi. "I know you're not going to let the NAACP take over your state and permit that organization to use your children as pawns in a game of racial politics." The audience shouted back, "No! No!" Afterwards, the participants filed back out into the chilly night, "fresher in a determination to hold the line" of segregation. "It was, perhaps, high tide of the Council movement," wrote one attendee. "After that night there could be no doubt that the South ... had found in the Citizens' Councils a flag to rally round. The Deep South was solid once more."

Forty thousand Alabamians had reportedly joined the citizens' council crusade since the formation of the first chapter back in 1954. But just as the movement hit its peak, it began to self-destruct.