Our People Stories: Pauline Sibbald
Taking over the mantle from Terry Dunsford’s poignant story connected to The Toon Improvement Bill we have another amazing story. This time its Pauline Sibbald who asked us, “do you think people would be interested in this?” Well, judge for yourselves…
Long Distance Information Give Me Memphis Tennessee
“Our People Stories: “You’re probably thinking what has this song got to do with our upcoming concert Power to the People, and if ever there was a tenuous link…this is it!
In the late 1970s I found myself in Memphis, Tennessee running a record shop selling new and used records. How did I end up there? Well, my partner at the time came from Memphis, but we had met in Canada where I was working and travelling after university. He was a draft dodger from the Vietnam War and like many at the time had moved to Canada to avoid having to fight what many considered an unwinnable and later an unjust war. He had been living in Toronto for a number of years before I met him and had not been able to return to see his family until President Jimmy Carter granted a pardon in 1977. So, in 1978 we decided it was time to visit and ended up staying for a couple of years.
However, prior to that, when he lived in Memphis he had been involved locally with the civil rights movement and had taken part in a number of marches – most notably the March Against Fear. On June 5, 1966 after the shooting of James Meredith, who had begun a solitary march from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi; civil rights leaders and organisations continued the march to Jackson. My partner was one of the twenty-five thousand marchers on that march. It was also on this march that Stokely Carmichael first used the slogan ‘Black Power’ in a speech.
Ironically, it was in Memphis where Martin Luther King was shot in 1968 and when we lived there I remember visiting the Lorraine Motel to see where the tragedy had happened. At the time I lived there Memphis was still pretty run down and looked nothing like the gentrified place it appears to be now. Despite the laws that had passed, it was a difficult place for us to live as a mixed race couple. After our record shop had been burgled three times in as many years we decided that life in Canada was easier and better so moved back there.”
