Dick J. Reavis :
Former civil rights activist and political street vendor Charlie Saulsberry is dead at 70

Charlie, who was well-known around the UT campus in late-’60s Austin, ‘was a lefty, but always a heretic.’

charlie saulsberry by Miriam Lizcano

Charlie Saulsberry. Drawing by Miriam Lizcano / The Rag Blog.

By Dick J. Reavis | The Rag Blog | March 22, 2015

Charlie Saulsberry, 70, a familiar figure on the UT-Austin campus during the late ‘60s, died Monday, March 16, in Alabama. Strokes and kidney failure brought about his death.

Saulsberry was known to thousands of UT students because every weekday on a Guadalupe Street sidewalk just steps outside the University Co-Op bookstore, he laid out a variety of books, pamphlets, and cause buttons, and spent the day selling them to passerby. His books and pamphlets included titles like How the United States Got Involved in Vietnam and Red Star Over China. His buttons carried slogans like “War Is a Drag!”

During the three semesters that he ran the makeshift stand, he jibed and conversed with hundreds of students who remember him if only because an impediment caused him to cut short the last syllables of words he spoke. To engage in a conversation with Charlie one had to lend an ear, but those who listened to him benefitted because he was a self-taught and unique commentator in a milieu of polarized and stylized opinion. He was a lefty, but always a heretic.

Saulsberry had grown up in Demopolis, a small town in the Alabama Black Belt.

Saulsberry had grown up in Demopolis, a small town in the Alabama Black Belt. In junior high he had applied for a card at the municipal library and been turned down because of his race. In high school he had become the ghetto’s village atheist, had marched from Selma to Montgomery with Dr. King, and had afterward become a leader in efforts to convulse the region; he repeatedly landed in jail.

In 1966, when a group of white civil rights workers from UT returned from summer duty in Demopolis, he’d come with them, in part because, to protect her other children from her fears of Ku Klux terror, his mother had banned him from her house. Charlie’s speech impediment and his arrest record had barred him from local employment.

In Austin Saulsberry made his living from the sidewalk sales, and after a time, from participation in an anti-poverty-era job-training program, always securing cheap or free housing from people he had met at his spot on the Drag. He spent most of his evenings in the left-wing milieu of African-American student organizations and UT’s burgeoning chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). A single story summarizes his life and that of Austin, back in the day.

On a Saturday evening, April 27, 1968, Leo Northington, an African-American UT student who had been hired as a musician at a North Austin bar, showed for work a few minutes early. He went inside to wait for the other band members, all white. A boxing match between a black fighter and a white fighter was showing on a television screen. According to Northington, when the black fighter won the bout, Don Weedon, who operated a Conoco station nearby, at 34th and Guadalupe, beset Northington, the only black man in sight, pummeling him until the bar’s manager intervened.

Northington took his case not only to the police, but also to a student organization at UT, Afro-Americans for Black Liberation (AABL). It called for a boycott of the station, alleging that Weedon had a contract to provide fuel to university vehicles.

don weedon demo grace cleaver

Austin police arrest Grace Cleaver during demonstration at Don Weedon’s gas station in Austin in April 1968. Photo by
Belmer Wright /
The Rag.

For nearly a week two figures in the protest movement, Larry Jackson, who was prominent in the local chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Grace Cleaver of AABL, agitated for action. [The Larry Jackson of SNCC is not the person of that name who has been in Austin news recently.] They called for a demonstration on Friday, May 3.

As Larry Jackson interposed himself between a cop and the squirming Cleaver, another black male jumped onto the cop’s back.

That afternoon some 200 people, mostly members of AABL and SDS, sat down on the station’s parking lot. Austin police descended there too, and, spotting Cleaver, handled her roughly. Jackson, now an East Austin community leader, rose from the driveway to interpose himself between a cop and the squirming Cleaver. As he did, another black male jumped onto the cop’s back. A short-lived tussle ensued and when its parties separated — the assailant having run off — the cops handcuffed Jackson and hauled him away.

About 30 people who had remained seated on the driveway put up only passive resistance as, one by one, they were arrested and chauffeured to jail, where they were held only a few hours before being released on personal recognizance. [Full disclosure: I was one of them.] A half-dozen were tried as a group and found guilty of mere trespass. Afterward, most of the others paid $50 fines on the same charge and put the incident behind them.

Jackson, however, was accused of a more serious offense, assault on a police officer. He was innocent — and the authorities had to know as much. He had struck nobody, pushed nobody, threatened nobody, merely having tried to stand between Cleaver and the cop. When he went to trial on May 27, his attorney arranged for the showing of a black-and-white film of the event.

Charlie Saulsberry ran the movie projector for the courtroom screening; he volunteered to do that. He stood not more than six feet from the jury box. When the projector got to the segment showing the assault on the cop, he stopped his machine, reversed it, and played the scene several times, both at the projector’s usual speed and in slow motion.

When the jurors returned they gave the adage ‘justice is blind’ a new meaning.

Then Jackson’s attorney, Bobby Caldwell of Houston, rose and asked the jury, “Don’t you see that the man who assaulted the officer was a larger black male than Larry Jackson?” Jackson was about six inches shorter than the assailant, who stood 6’1” — Charlie Saulsberry. After the screening and summations, the six white jurors retired for less than half an hour. When they returned they gave the adage “justice is blind” a new meaning.

They convicted Jackson.

As the trial showed, Austin was then still an unpretentious part of the South, undistinguished by the rise of country music outlaws and as yet uninspired by slogans like “Keep Austin Weird.” What seemed weird in those days, at least to those who would later put their imprint on the city, were characters like Weedon and his friends at court.

Saulsberry headed west in the early ‘70s, spending more than 20 years as a janitor at the University of Utah, never to see Texas again. Among the activities that he later reported were two runs for state representative on a single-plank platform. Saulsberry lost both races, but got what he wanted: health coverage for the University’s custodial staff.

But because he was out of touch with both his Alabama family and his Austin friends, his high school graduating class listed him as dead in its anniversary bulletins, and did not see him again until he returned to Demopolis in 2010 to convalesce from a stroke and to manage the decline that has now resulted in his death.

[Dick J. Reavis is a retired Texas journalist who now lives in Dallas. His account is indebted to Gary Thiher, whose 1968 Rag story about the Weedon incident reformed his memory of the Weedon affair.]

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7 Responses to Dick J. Reavis :
Former civil rights activist and political street vendor Charlie Saulsberry is dead at 70

  1. Alice Embree says:

    Thank you, Dick. What a walk down memory lane. R.I.P. Charlie.

  2. Jim Simons says:

    Dick
    You may not remember that I was co-counsel with Bobby Caldwell in Larry Jackson’s trial you wrote about. More accurately I was second chair. In 1968, I was shunned by white lawyers (no great loss) for sitting second chair to a black lawyer. If I remember correctly, Grace Cleaver was represented by uptown white lawyer Frank Maloney but got no different result than Larry did with his bi-racial radical
    lawyers.

  3. Wow, trip down memory lane indeed — I’m trying to remember, Dick, if Charlie was in your van on the trip back from the Bloomington IN SDS NC meeting when it seemed like we were never gonna get out of the snow — there were a lot of us piled in the back trying not to freeze!
    I enjoyed conversations w/ Charlie in part because of his speech impediment; more correctly, enjoyed watching his cogent observations force others to strive to understand that final word that so often was cut short. He had a unique viewpoint on many issues, and, as the story you tell about the Don Weedon incident shows, a great sense of humor.
    Jim’s comment made me laff; another memory trip: Frank Maloney may have been “uptown,” but when I voluntarily took a lie detector test after George’s murder (insurance plot &/or love triangle being favored scenarios of the lying pigs who were actually concealing the real perp’s identity at the time), it was Mr. Maloney who went with me, and you better believe I was treated with kid gloves at the cop shop; he was at my side every minute.
    I don’t believe he billed me for that, either; a good guy, recommended by another “uptown” fellow, Thomas Watkins, Esq., himself recommended by my spiritual advisor, Rev. Bob Breihan.
    Did not know Charlie had marched w/ Dr. King at Selma; so good to know that; it turns out I’ve met quite a few of those marchers through the years. I wonder, did he see the recent movie, and what did he think of it?
    And Dick, you’re such a card; “full disclosure” my fanny; it was you who brought Charlie to TX from Demopolis, with yr toothbrush in yr overall pockets; ha ha, he blew a lot of white students’ minds, and they all needed blowing.
    I’m glad he got back to Alabama at the end. Utah?? Unreal!

    • Candice Hyatt says:

      I am such a lucky person to have known him as a child while growing up in Utah. He impacted my life very deeply. He was the kindest sweetest man. We were neighbors in “the hood” on West Capital Hill. As little girls, my sister and I would watch out our front window for when Charlie would be walking by our house. We would see him, we’d run out the door screaming “It’s Charlie!! It’s Charlie!! He never held back his love and never held back his heart to the many people whose lives he touched. He IS a special man through and through. One of my few heroes and favorite humans.

  4. Shirley R Crowe. MSW says:

    Mr Reavis. Your blog which featured Charlie Salisbury was a very enjoyable read. My name is Shirley Crowe and I work for Homestead Hospice near Demopolis Al. I visited Mr Charlie while he was on our services and was at his bedside when he passed. Thank you for your article. I have posted it on my FB wall for other staff to read Charlie was a quiet mN with a sweet soul. He is truly missed by our staff and his family

  5. James Carey says:

    I had the pleasure to meet Charlie here in Utah through my wife. He spent a few Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners with us. He was always the last to leave! I was always blown away by his knowledge of world events. He knew as much about Irish socialist history as I knew myself. He was an absolute gentleman and a pure soul. RIP Charlie. Very glad that I got to meet you and consider you a friend.

  6. Bertha Spann says:

    I remember Charlie Salisbury when he was a little boy living in demopolis Alabama his mother uster to do my hair she was a hair dresser rip in peach Charlie

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