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Interview: Carol Ruth Silver
Carol Silver describes the four-hour ride in the paddy wagon between Jackson and Parchman as more frightening than any previous part of the whole jail experience. Twenty-three girls, white and Negro, were crowded into a truck that had no springs and: Bounced along toward an unknown future. Many of us had black and blue marks when we arrived because the drivers delighted in stopping and starting suddenly which threw us against each other and the sharp corners of the seats. But the most terrifying part of the ride was the three occasions when the driver suddenly jolted off to the side of highway and stopped. We imagined every horror, from a waiting ambush of the Ku Klux Klan to mined roads. When Carol got out of jail and was asked to give a speech about her experience, she recounted what she had learned from Ruby Doris Smith in jail: We were furious, we were outraged, we were seething with anger. But she, from the depth of her belief in nonviolence as a way of life, as well as a policy as expedient action, from her deep commitment to the tenets of Christianity and the brotherhood of all mankind-it was she who ministered to our pain, it was she who urged us not to feel so badly about her beating, it was she who turned this physical defeat into a victory of love over violence and oppression.
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