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The Rising of the Bread
Fayette County TN Tent City for Evicted Voters
(Spring)
Clyde Kennard Framed and Jailed in MS
(Sept)
Before they stormed the Bastile in 1789, the poor and oppressed of the Paris slums whispered to each other "The bread is rising. The bread is rising." As yeast works its invisible magic on the dough before the loaves are placed in the oven, so too the ferment of revolt and the forbidden words of freedom percolated through the dark tenement cellars and the filthy Parisian alleys behind the glittering palaces. "The bread is rising" was the password that gave admittance to clandestine meetings, and it was the first call to arms of the French revolution.
So too in 1959, hidden from establishment eyes, the bread of revolution is secretly rising among Black students on college campuses throughout the South — and in the North as well. Something has to be done about segregation. Stymied by "Massive Resistance" and "All Deliberate Speed," the courtroom strategy of the NAACP is taking too long and has achieved too little. Something has to be done and someone has to do it. If their elders won't, can they?
Over many months, small groups of students study and debate the strategies and tactics of Nonviolent Resistance. Under cover of church, YMCA, and educational conferences, students from different schools meet and argue and dream. Can Gandhi's nonviolent tactics be applied to the segregated South? Can the nonviolent strategies of the Montgomery Bus Boycott be adapted to opposing segregation in commercial establishments? Is it too dangerous? How will being arrested affect education and future careers? Can they do it? Will they do it?
Beneath the notice of the white power-structure, unknown to Black ministers and college officials, the bread is rising in the dorms and church basements. Unknown, unnoticed, hidden from view until February 1st, 1960 when four Black students sit down at a Greensboro NC lunch counter and ask for a cup of coffee in the First Sit-in.
To the media, to the power-structure, to the college administrators, the Sit-ins that sweep across the South come as astonishing bolts from the blue. But the sit-ins are not spontaneous events — they are the product of months of discussion and planning.
For more information:
Books:
The Children
The New Abolitionists
Fayette and Haywood Counties lie just east of Memphis and just north of Mississippi. They are "cotton counties," and in the 1950s Blacks outnumber whites 2 to 1. Economically, culturally, and politically these two counties are more like Mississippi than Tennessee, but they are governed by Tennessee law. And unlike Mississippi, under Tennessee law, Blacks are eligible to vote, there is no literacy test, no poll tax, and no "grandfather clause."
Though Blacks in nearby Memphis vote in large numbers, almost no Blacks are registered in Fayette or Haywood counties. In 1958, an elderly Black man in Fayette County is falsely convicted by an all-white jury of an alleged murder that occurred 18 years earlier in 1940. Jurors are chosen from the pool of voters, and the single registered Black voter is afraid to even show up. In response to this travesty of justice, young Black men form the Fayette County and Haywood County Civic and Welfare Leagues and begin a successful voter registration drive.
In the late 1950s, Tennessee is still part of the "solid South," meaning that only Democrats are elected to office, so the real election is the Democratic Primary. The whites who control the Party in Fayette and Haywood counties prevent the newly registered Black voters from voting in the 1959 Democratic Primary for sheriff, judge, and other county offices because the primary is for "whites-only." In November of 1959, the U.S. Department of Justice files a lawsuit against the "white-only" primary under the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
When a court overturns the "white-only" primary in April of 1960, the White Citizens Council distributes lists of Black voters (and some sympathetic whites) to merchants who refuse to sell the necessities of life (food, clothing, gasoline, etc.) to those on the blacklist. White doctors withold medical treatment, wholesalers and distributors refuse to supply Black-owned stores, and insurance companies cancel policies. White landowners evict more than 400 Black sharecroppers — and bankers foreclose mortgages — to drive Black voters out of the two counties.
Many of the dispossed move into tent encampments — known as "Freedom Villages" or "Tent Cities" — on land owned by Blacks using tents donated by an anonymous white merchant (his name kept secret to this day for his safety).
Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver asks the Red Cross and other agencies to help the evicted Blacks. The local Red Cross chapter refuses, saying there is "No need." The AFL-CIO donates money. Food and clothing are donated by the UAW in Detroit, and volunteer Teamsters drive the supplies south. In 1960, the newly formed Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), the Quakers, and the National Baptist Convention rally national support for the Freedom Villages.
The NAACP organizes a national boycott of oil companies whose Tennessee stations are refusing to sell gas to Black voters. Gulf, Texaco, and others agree to sell gas to Blacks who desperately need fuel for their tractors and trips to Memphis to purchase food.
In November of 1960, the new Black voters elect Republicans to county office for the first time since the end of Reconstruction more than 80 years previous. They also vote for Democratic senator Estes Kefauver who has supported them against the White Citizens Council and defended their right to vote.
On Christmas night, 1960, Jim Forman of SNCC tape records Georgia Mae Turner in her cold, damp tent:
In 1962, after almost three years of litigation, a Federal court finally halts the evections and economic retaliation against Black voters. After the Selma Voting Rights campaign in 1965, the Voting Rights Act is passed removing many of the remaining barriers used to prevent Blacks from registering.
For more information:
In 1958, war hero, farmer, and NAACP activist, Clyde Kennard applies
for admission to Mississippi Southern College
(MSC) — now University of Southern
Mississippi — in Hattiesburg. Under the Brown decision, MSC cannot deny him
admission because he is Black. His application is "lost." When he
reapplies, the local White Citizens
Council tells merchants not to sell Kennard supplies for his farm.
The Mississippi Sovereignty
Commission investigates Kennard to discover information they can
use to discredit him, but they fail to find anything they can use
against him.
In August of 1959, the MSC board decrees that all transfer
students — except atheletes — must have
a straight "A" average. Kennard had previously attended the University
of Chicago where he had good grades, but not an "A" in every single
subject. He is again denied admission. He applies a third time. His
car is pulled over by the cops who arrest him on false charges of
alchohol-possession (Forrest County is a "dry" county). When the
Sovereignty Commission files are opened 40 years later, it is
discovered that the Commission framed Kennard by planting whiskey
under the front seat of his car.
In 1960, Kennard is again framed on trumped-up charges, this time that
he hired a man to steal five bags of chicken feed worth about $25.
After only 10 minutes deliberation, Kennard is convicted by an
all-white jury and sentenced to seven years in the infamous Parchman
Penitentiary. When NAACP leader
Medgar Evers declares that
Kennard's trial was "a mockery of judicial justice," he is sentenced
to 30-day in jail for contempt of court. After being denied medical
treatment by prison authorities, Kennard dies of cancer in 1963.
As his reward for framing Kennard, the actual thief is given five
years probation and set free. Years later, he testifies in a sworn
affidavit before a judge that: "
In 2005, three students at Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire
IL, investigate the Kennard case with the assistance of the
Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern
University School of Law. They enter their documentary
"Carrying the Burden: The Story of Clyde Kennard" in
the National History Day contest. The case is taken up by the Center
and draws media attention. On May 18, 2006, Kennard is exonerated and
his record expunged by the same court that originally framed him.
For more information:
Book: Step by Step
Web: Fayette County TN Tent City
Clyde Kennard Framed and Jailed in MS (Sept)
Kennard did not ask me to steal,
Kennard did not ask me to break into the co-op, Kennard did not ask me
to do anything illegal."
Web: Clyde Kennard Frameup
1959 Quotation Sources:
1. Hungry Blues August 02, 2004.
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