Sitting across from a black panther, watching him eat octopus

No, it isn't a Captain Beefheart song. Could be, though. Scott B. Smith says he's still SNCC (snick) -- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, actually. He was there at the very beginning.

I took him and Ben Greenberg for Thai food last week. Scott B. is a living history lesson in action.

In Lowndes County were I worked with Stokeley the Lowndes Co Freedom Org was presented with two logo's one of a raised clench fist and a black cat (panther) for those voters who could not read or write a symbol of the org that would be placed on the ballot for the coming election those on the sncc staff Bob Mants, Judy, myself (ScottB) Jimmy Rogers and Stokeley all agreed that the Black cat would be best.

The Back Cat had superstitious powers within the black&white communities and as Stokeley put it during a Mass meeting that a Black cat could always beat a white rooster(symbol of the ALA DEMOCRATIC party). The people in Lowndes Co all agreed and decided to use the logo. It was the press who changed the reference from cat to panther mainly because of the size and attacking position of the cat.

This logo was taken to the bay area by Mark Comfort of ODAC in Oakland after the battle of Fort Deposit where we went in to that community armed when we received a valid report of a KKK attack on the black people that had voted. That's where the statement came from about self defense from. When Mark & Terry Cannon told the story about what happened that night in Oakland Huey and Bobby were present and started their own org.

We used that logo all across the black belt counties that we worked in and the people responded like Panthers attacking the political structure like never before. Very proud of the fact that I WAS THERE at the historical perod of time and the people there in Lowndes Co are a proud strong community that I'll never forget working with. They caused the change in Ala that still exists today.This symbol was used in Oakland for the org known as the Black Panthers and across the U.S.

Scott B. SNCC staff Lowndes Co Ala.

I'd been thinking for a long time that the history of Tallassee needed updating. A History of Tallassee was published by the about-to-close Mt. Vernon Mills in 1949, but I'm not aware of any similar historical attempts at archiving since.

I'd been thinking for a long time that the Writers' Bloc site needed doing, for longer things than blog entries.

There's so much to cover since the 1940s, and so many stories that aren't what the Chamber of Commerce would appreciate, but they need to be told; like this one Ben and I have talked about a lot. So it's on. In a serious way. I'm expecting it'll be a forum or portal-style website, collecting and telling the oral history, and that I'll be organizing it in anticipation of a printed version.