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University of Georgia Desegregated (Jan)
Rock Hill SC, "Jail-no-Bail" Sit-ins (Feb-Mar)
Tougaloo Nine and Jackson State Protest (Mar)
Freedom Rides (May-Nov)
Frame-up, Escape, & Exile of Robert F. Williams (1961-1969)
Mississippi — the Eye of the Storm
Voter Education Project (1961-1968)
Direct-Action or Voter Registration? (Summer)
Voter Registration & Direct-Action in McComb MS (Aug-Oct)
Herbert Lee Murdered (Sept)
Desegregate Route 40 Project (Aug-Dec)
Albany GA, Movement (Oct 1961 - Aug 1962)
Savannah Boycott Victory (Oct)
Christmas Boycott in Clarksdale MS (Dec)
Baton Rouge Student Protests (Dec 1961 - Jan 1962)
In the summer of 1959, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes apply for admission to the Athens campus of the Unversity of Georgia (UGA). They are recent graduates of Turner High School, the elite academic institution of Atlanta's segregated Black school system. Despite their obvious qualification and the Supreme Court's Brown v Board of Education ruling UGA denies them admission.
Represented by Constance Baker Motley of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (known as the "Inc Fund"), plus Atlanta attorneys Donald Hollowell and Horace Ward (who had himself made an earlier attempt to integrate UGA), along with law clerk Vernon Jordan, Holmes and Hunter fight their case through the courts. Each quarter they submit an application and each quarter they are denied on various flimsy pretexts such as "No room in the dormitories."
On January 6, 1961, a Federal judge orders them admitted. Georgia's appeal to the Supreme Court is quickly denied a couple of days later. When Hunter and Holmes arrive on campus white students jeer and taunt: "Two, four, six, eight. We don't want to integrate!" After a sports event on January 11, a mob attacks Charlayne Hunter's dormitory and has to be driven off by police tear gas.
Instead of punishing the white rioters, UGA suspends Holmes and Hunter "for their own safety and the safety of other students." It is later revealed that some university and government officials hope to repeat the tactic that worked for the University of Alabama when they expelled Autherine Lucy after a white riot in 1956. But this time their strategy backfires. More than 400 UGA faculty (a majority) sign a resolution condeming both the violence and the suspension, and calling for the return of the two Black students.
Within days a new court order is handed down and they return to class. Hunter and Holmes are joined by Black graduate student Mary Frances Early, who transfers from the University of Michigan and in 1962 becomes the first Black to receive a degree from UGA. Hamilton Holmes becomes the first Black admitted to Emory University School of Medicine and caps a long career as medical director of Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital and associate dean at Emory. Charlayne Hunter (today Charlayne Hunter-Gault) graduates from UGA in 1963 and builds an honored career in journalism working for The New Yorker, The New York Times, the PBS MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, National Public Radio (NPR), and Johannesburg bureau chief of Cable News Network (CNN).
For more information:
Web:
Charlayne Hunter-Gault (New Georgia Encyclopedia)
Hamilton Holmes (New Georgia Encyclopedia)
40th Anniversary Desegregation of UGA (Univ. of Georgia)
At the October 1960 SNCC strategy conference in Atlanta, some
activists argue for "Jail-No-Bail" tactics. They take a Gandhian
position that paying bail or fines indicates acceptance of an immoral
system and validates their own arrests. And by serving their
sentences, they dramatize the injustice, intensify the struggle, and
gain additional media coverage.
There is also a practical component to "Jail-No-Bail." The Movement
has little money and most southern Blacks are poor. It is hard to
scrape up bail money, and sit-in struggles are
faltering — not from lack of volunteers to risk
arrest — but from lack of money to bail them out.
Moreover, paying fines provides the cops with financial resources that
are then used to continue suppressing the freedom struggle. By
refusing bail, they render meaningless the no-money-for-bail barrier
and by serving time they put financial pressure on local authorities
who have to pay the costs of incarcerating them.
In the Fall of 1960, CORE field secretary Tom
Gaither — who as Claflin student-body President had led
the large Orangeburg
sit-in movement — arrives in Rock Hill SC. Sit-ins
began in Rock Hill almost a
year earlier, but have made no headway against the intransigent
resistance of the White Citizens Council — there have
been many arrests, over $17,000 in bail money has been posted, and the
media no longer covers the protests. Tom and students from Friendship
College (a 2-year Baptist institution) decide to intensify the
struggle with "Jail-No-Bail" tactics.
On February 1, 1961 — a year to the day after the Greensboro sit-
in — Gaither and 9 others are convicted of
"Trespass" for sitting-in at the McCrory lunch counter. They are
sentenced to fines of $100 each or 30 days hard labor on the county
chain-gang. They begin serving their sentence on February 2nd.
Four days later on February 6, four SNCC leaders —
J. Charles Jones, Diane Nash, Charles
Sherrod, and Ruby Doris Smith (later Ruby Doris
Robinson) — journey to Rock Hill and stage a solidarity
"Jail-No-Bail" sit-in.
The "Jail-No-Bail" tactic
re-energizes the Rock Hill movement, 300 Blacks attend a mass meeting,
and picket lines grow to over 100 protesters. The media resumes
covering the demonstrations, including full-page spreads in the
Baltimore Afro-American. More SNCC reinforcements arrive from
Nashville on February 12 for a weekend of direct-action culminating in
a Sunday motorcade of 600 people to York County Prison Farm.
Inside the prison, the students are placed in solitary confinement as
punishment for singing the song "Oh Freedom — Before
I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave." As further punishment,
they are restricted to bread and water. When the students complete
their sentences they are honored by a mass meeting in Rock Hill.
Meanwhile, mass picketing continues throughout February and March.
But while "Jail-No-Bail" temporarily revives the Rock Hill movement
and garners a new wave of media coverage, it is not enough to force
Rock Hill to desegregate. As exhaustion begins to sap the Rock Hill
protests, Gaither proposes a new idea to push the struggle
forward — a Freedom Ride
through Rock Hill and other states of the deep south.
As the Freedom Movement continues into the future, the "Jail-No-Bail"
tactic is tried again by many of the Freedom
Riders. More than 300 of those arrested in Jackson MS, refuse to
pay their fines and instead serve sentences in Mississippi's notorious
Parchman Prison. But in later years, "Jail-No-Bail" is rarely used as
a
tactic-of-choice. Instead it is mostly used as a tactic-of-necessity
when there is no money available to pay bail or fines. There are a
number of reasons for "Jail-No-Bail" becoming the strategy of last
resort:
For more information:
Tougaloo College is a private Black institution that in the 1960s was
just outside the Jackson MS city limits (it has since been
incorporated into the city). After careful planning and training, nine
members of the NAACP Youth Council — Meredith Anding,
Samuel Bradford, Alfred Cook, Geraldine Edwards, Janice Jackson,
Joseph Jackson, Albert Lassiter, Evelyn Pierce, and Ethel
Sawyer — attempt to use the white-only Jackson public
library on March 27. They sit quitely at different tables reading
books that are not available in the "colored" library. When the nine
refuse to leave, they are arrested for "Disturbing the Peace" and
become known as the "Tougaloo Nine."
Tougaloo President Daniel Beittel — who is
white — courageously refuses to expell the student
protesters, despite threats of retaliation against Tougaloo and
himself.
Later that day, while the Tougaloo Nine languish in jail, Jackson
State College students including Dorie and Joyce Ladner organize a
"prayer vigil" in their support. Jackson State is a segregated state
institution and demonstrations — in fact, civil rights
activities of any kind — are forbidden. Hundreds of
people attend the prayer which is broken up by Jackson State President
Jacob Reddix backed by a squad of cops. President Reddix, in a rage,
knocks one of the students to the ground. Four students, including the
Ladner sisters, and student President Walter Williams, are expelled
for their activity in support of the Tougaloo Nine.
The following day, Jackson State students boycott class, hold an
illegal rally, and then march towards the jail where the Tougaloo Nine
are being arraigned. The Jackson State marchers are attacked by
club-swinging police using tear gas and dogs to disperse them. (A few
blocks away several thousand white marchers in Confederate uniforms
carrying rebel battle flags are being reviewed by Governor Ross
Barnett to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Mississippi's secession
from the union in 1861.)
When the the the Tougaloo Nine arrive at the courthouse they are
cheered by a small crowd of Black supporters who had not been able to
squeeze into the "Colored" section of the courtroom. The cops attack
these bystanders with clubs and dogs. That night, more than 1,000
people — many of them adults — attend a
rally in support of the Nine. Myrlie Evers latter says of the Tougaloo
Nine: "The change of tide in Mississippi began with the Tougaloo
Nine and the library sit-in."
For more information:
See also
Contents:
In December of 1960, the Supreme Court decides the Boynton case
(Boynton v. Virginia),
ruling against segregation of facilities used by inter-state
travelers. By early '61, the Rock
Hill SC sit-in movement has run into a stone wall of racist
resistance, and CORE activist Tom Gaither proposes a "Freedom
Ride" through Rock Hill and elsewhere in the deep south to test
and implement the Boynton decision.
On May 4, CORE Director James Farmer leads 13 Freedom Riders (7 Black,
6 white) out of Washington on Greyhound and Trailways buses. The plan
is to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and
Mississippi. Their final destination is New Orleans Louisiana. Most of
the Riders are from CORE, two are from SNCC, and many are in their 40s
and 50s. Little trouble is encountered as they travel through Virginia
and North Carolina, but John Lewis is attacked in Rock Hill and some
of the Riders are arrested in Charlotte NC, and Winnsboro SC.
With the cooperation of the cops, a Klan mob of more than 100 ambush
the Riders in Anniston AL, on Mothers Day, May 15. The Riders are
brutally beaten and the Greyhound bus is set on fire. The mob holds
the door shut to burn them alive. The Alabama Highway Partol has an
undercover cop on board. He pulls his gun to force the mob back, and
the passengers tumble off the bus — barely escaping
with their lives — just as the gas tanks are exploding.
When the Trailways bus reaches Anniston, the mob boards the bus and
beats the Riders with fists and clubs. The bus manages to reach
Birmingham where Commissioner of Public Safety Commissioner Eugene
"Bull" Connor encourages another KKK mob to savagely attack the Riders
again, leaving them bloody and battered. At the hospital, Jim Peck of
CORE requires 53 stitches to close his wounds. The FBI knows in
advance that the busses are going to be attacked in Anniston and
Birmingham, but they do nothing to prevent the violence, do nothing to
protect the Riders from assault, do nothing to enforce the Supreme
Court ruling.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and activists from the
Alabama Christian Movement for Human
Rights (ACMHR) defy the mobs to rescue the Riders. Shuttlesworth
is arrested twice on various trumped up charges.
The following day, the company drivers refuse to work any bus carrying
Freedom Riders. Unable to proceed to Montgomery, the CORE Riders
decide to fly to New Orleans to attend a previously scheduled rally at
which they are the main speakers. Bomb threats prevent the plane from
taking off and they are harassed by the mob as they wait hour after
hour at the airport. Finally, under pressure from Attorney General
Robert Kennedy, the airline manages to get a flight off the ground in
the dead of night, and the CORE Riders reach New Orleans.
Though they know they are putting their young lives in deadly peril,
activists from the SNCC-affiliated Nashville Student Movement (NSM)
won't allow the KKK to defeat the Ride. Student leader Diane Nash
tells Rev. Shuttlesworth: "The students have decided that we can't
let violence overcome. We are coming into Birmingham to continue the
Freedom Ride." Their elders — teachers, community
leaders, pastors — are certain they will be killed and
try to dissuade them. The students are not deterred.
Ten Riders (8 Black, 2 white) — including John Lewis
and Hank Thomas, the two young SNCC members of the original
Ride — take bus from Nashville to Birmingham on May 17.
When they arrive, they are arrested by "Bull" Connor who transports
them in the middle of the night to the Tennessee border and dumps them
by the side of the road. They manage to make their way back to
Birmingham where more Riders, including Ruby Doris Smith from SNCC in
Atlanta, reinforce them.
Now 19 strong (16 Black, 3 white) they return to the Greyhound
terminal. Again, the drivers refuse to carry
them — "I have only one life to give, and I'm not
going to give it to NAACP or CORE," says one driver. All
night — hour after hour — the Riders
wait for a bus while constantly harassed and besieged by a racist mob
led by Robert Shelton, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.
Under intense public pressure, the Kennedy administration extracts a
promise from a reluctant Alabama Governor Patterson to protect the
Freedom Riders on their journey from Birmingham to Montgomery.
Greyhound is forced to provide a driver. On the morning of May 20, the
Freedom Ride resumes. Afraid of a Klan ambush, the bus streaks south
towards Montgomery at 90 miles an hour escorted by Alabama Highway
Patrol cars, their sirens screaming.
But when the bus reaches the Montgomery city limits the Highway Patrol
suddenly disappears. Just before the bus arrives, all the cops who had
been guarding the Greyhound terminal also disappear. When the Freedom
Riders step off the bus, hundreds of Klansmen swarm over them.
Screaming "Get the niggers!" They attack with baseball bats,
broken bottles, and lead pipes. Reporters are beaten and their cameras
smashed (which is why no photographs exist of this murderous attack).
Jim Zwerg is beaten to bloody unconsciousness, his teeth knocked out.
John Lewis is felled by a wooden crate to the head. When Justice
Department official John Seigenthaler tries to rescue two of the women
Riders, he too is beaten unconscious and left bloody on the pavement.
Acting against orders, Alabama Public Safety Director Floyd Mann pulls
his revolver and stops the Klansmen who are kicking and stomping
Zwerg, Lewis, and William Barbee, probably saving their lives. (When
Governor George Wallace
takes office in 1963 he
immediately fires Mann, and replaces him with the staunch
segregationist, Al Lingo.)
After allowing the Klan its reign of terror, the police finally show
up. The mob, now grown to over 1,000, expands outward from the
Greyhound terminal attacking Blacks on the street, setting one teenage
boy on fire, and burning the Riders' luggage in a bonfire. The cops
make no arrests, instead they serve the Freedom Riders with
injunctions blaming them for the violence.
Under the segregation laws, Black cab drivers cannot take white
Freedom Riders to the hospital, and white drivers won't. Only the
Catholic St. Jude's hospital will treat wounded Riders of any color.
From his hospital bed, William Barbee tells reporters: "As soon as
we've recovered from this, we'll start again." And from the white
side of the segregated hospital, Zwerg agrees, saying: "We are
prepared to die."
In Washington, pressure intensifies on the Kennedys. JFK issues a
tepid "statement of concern," and Robert Kennedy orders Federal
marshals to Alabama to protect interstate commerce. Meanwhile, James
Farmer of CORE begins recruiting more Riders to head south.
The following night, Sunday May 21st, more than 1200 people pack
Reverend Abernathy's 1st Baptist church to honor the Freedom Riders.
Dr. King speaks in their support. Outside, a mob of more than 3,000
whites heckle and harass Blacks and the handful of Federal marshals
protecting the church. No city or state cops are in sight.
Shuttlesworth, down from Birmingham, braves the mob that now
completely surrounds the church to escort in James Farmer.
The mob overturns a car and sets it ablaze. The marshals desperately
try to protect the church from assault and fire bombs. Inside, the
people of Montgomery sing hymns and freedom songs in defiance. As
rocks shatter the windows and tear gas seeps in, the children are sent
to the basement for protection. Black men draw hidden pistols from
their pockets and prepare to defend their families if the mob manages
to break down the doors.
Slowly, reluctantly, President Kennedy moves towards committing
federal troops, but Governor Patterson forestalls him by declaring
martial law and sending in the cops and Alabama National Guard to
disperse the mob. With the mob now gone, people try to leave church,
but the Alabama National Guard — the "Dixie" Division
with the Confederate flag as its shoulder
patch — forces them at bayonet point to remain inside
the sweltering, tear gas filled building for the entire night.
The next day more Freedom Riders from CORE and SNCC arrive in
Montgomery. Behind their backs and hidden from public view, the
Kennedys cut a deal with the governors of Alabama and Mississippi. The
state police and National Guard will protect the Riders from mob
violence — thereby ending media coverage of bloody
lawlessness which is humiliating JFK at home and embarrassing the U.S.
around the globe. In return, the Federal government will look the
other away and allow the two states to illegally — and
unconstitutionally — arrest the Freedom Riders even
though they are engaged in inter-state commerce protected by the
Boynton decision.
On Wednesday morning, May 24, a dozen Freedom Riders board a Trailways
bus for the 250 mile journey to Jackson MS. Surrounded by Highway
Patrol and National Guard, the bus heads west on Highway 80 in a
caravan of more than 40 vehicles. They pass through Selma at top speed
without stopping — there will be no bus-depot rest
stops until Jackson seven hours from Montgomery. Meanwhile, back in
Montgomery, 14 more Riders board the mid-day Greyhound for Jackson.
When the weary Riders arrive in Jackson and attempt to use "white
only" restrooms and lunch counters they are immediately arrested for
Breach of Peace and Refusal to Obey an Officer. Says Mississippi
Governor Ross Barnett in defense of segregation: "The Negro is
different because God made him different to punish him."
From lockup, the Riders announce "Jail No Bail" — they
will not pay fines for unconstitutional arrests and illegal
convictions — and by staying in jail they keep the
issue alive. Each prisoner will remain in jail for 39 days, the
maximum time they can serve without loosing their right to appeal the
unconstitutionality of their arrests, trials, and convictions. After
39 days, they file an appeal and post bond.
Back in Montgomery, a Greyhound from the east arrives with yet another
team of Riders including Charles Jones of SNCC and Yale University
Chaplin William Sloan Coffin. The Alabama Guardsmen are unable to
prevent the mob from attacking with thrown rocks and bottles. When
SCLC leaders Rev. Shuttlesworth, Rev. Abernathy, Wyatt Tee Walker, and
Bernard Lee join them at the bus terminal's "white only" lunch
counter, they are all arrested.
The Kennedys call for a "cooling off period" and condemn the Rides as
unpatriotic because they embarrass the nation on the world stage.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy — the chief law
enforcement officer of the land — is quoted as saying
that he "does not feel that the Department of Justice can side with
one group or the other in disputes over Constitutional rights."
Defying the Kennedys, CORE, SNCC, and SCLC reject any "cooling off
period" and form a Freedom Riders Coordinating Committee to keep the
Rides rolling.
June — July — August — more
than 60 Freedom Rides criss-cross the South, most of them converging
on Jackson where every Rider is arrested. By the end of the summer,
more than 300 have been jailed, including 41 local Jacksonians busted
for joining the Riders at segregated lunch counters.
Many of the Freedom Riders are moved to Parchman Penitentiary, the
Mississippi prison farm notorious for its brutal treatment of
inmates — where prison life is described as "worse
than slavery." Murders and rapes are common, and the guards use
shotguns and leather whips to enforce absolute rule. Mississippi
intends to halt the growing Freedom Movement by breaking the Riders'
spirit. When the Riders won't stop singing freedom songs their
mattresses are removed, forcing them to sleep on hard concrete and
steel. It's summer in the Delta, the windows are closed and the fans
stopped to create sweltering, suffocating heat. The riders must endure
poisonous hatred, inedible food, vicious beatings, and torture with
excruciating electric cattle prods. Fire hoses are used to smash
bodies against the steel bars.
Mississippi fails to break the Riders. They emerge from
prison — Parchman and Hinds County
Jail — stronger and more committed than before. And for
many of them, what began as a simple protest has been forged into a
vocation, a vocation for freedom and justice that shapes the rest of
their lives.
Finally, the Kennedy administration has the Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC) issue another desegregation order. When the new ICC
rule takes effect on November 1st, passengers are permitted to sit
wherever they please on the bus, "white" and "colored" signs come down
in the terminals, separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting
rooms are consolidated, and the lunch counters begin serving people
regardless of skin color. In Alabama and Mississippi a crack has
appeared in the solid wall of segregation.
See Desegregate Route 40 Project for
continuation.
As Movement veterans, we note the following about the Freedom Rides:
Or, as one Movement veteran succinctly put it: "S.N.C.C.
became SNICK!"
For more information:
See Robert Williams & Armed
Self-Defense in Monroe NC for previous events.
In June of 1961, the Black community of Monroe NC, led by Robert
Williams, resumes the struggle to integrate the city-owned swimming
pool so that Black children have a safe place to swim in the
sweltering summer heat. Led by Williams, Black teenagers picket the
segregated pool. White racists attack them. A white mob of 2,500
chants "Get the niggers! Get the niggers!" The local police,
the FBI, and the Department of Justice do nothing (as usual). Williams
and his wife Mabel carry pistols to defend themselves against the mob.
Rather than integrate, the city closes the pool.
Williams requests that Jim Forman (soon to be SNCC's Executive
Director) and Paul Brooks of SCLC arrange for an integrated team of
Freedom Riders to come to Monroe and picket the courthouse in support
of the Monroe struggle. Because Freedom Riders are so much in the news
he hopes that their presence will bring media attention to the Monroe
situation.
In August, the Freedom Riders arrive in Monroe. With young people
active in the newly-formed Monroe Nonviolent Action Committee, they
begin picketing in support of broad desegregation demands. The city
council enacts anti-picketing laws restricting not only how citizens
can protest but what their signs are permitted to say. The nonviolent
demonstrators are harassed and limited by the police and repeatedly
attacked by racists. (The iconic
photo of a young woman holding a
"Justice" sign is from one of these protests. Shortly after the
picture is taken, they are attacked. The police arrest some of the
pickets and let the attackers go free.)
On Sunday, August 27, a huge mob of 3,000 racists is mobilized by the
KKK to surround and attack the nonviolent pickets at the courthouse.
Jim Forman is clubbed in the head with a shotgun and others are
injured. More than 20 of the pickets are arrested for "Inciting a
riot." The mob attacks, and fires shots at Black bystanders.
In the Black neighborhood around Williams' home, local Blacks arm to
defend themselves from the Klan. There is a tense stand-off with the
KKK who are supported by the police. No one is killed or injured, but
when a white couple accidentally drives into the neighborhood they are
threatened by angry Blacks. Williams takes the couple into his home to
protect them. They are not harmed and leave as soon as it's safe to do
so.
The cops use the incident to frame Williams, his wife Mabel, Movement
supporter Mae Mallory, local activists Harold Reape and Richard
Crowder, and white Freedom Rider John Lowry on phony kidnapping
charges. Robert and Mabel Williams are forced to flee the country to
escape these false charges and the threat of being lynched, or
"shot-while-trying-to-escape," before they can defend themselves in
court. The others are eventually arrested and after a 4 year legal
struggle they are cleared of the absurd kidnapping charges.
For five years Robert and Mabel Williams live in Cuba where they
broadcast "Radio Free Dixie" and publish a newsletter, The
Crusader, both of which advocate armed self-defense. While there,
Williams writes Negroes With
Guns which greatly influences the
Black Power movement
and the founders of the Black Panther Party.
In 1966, Williams and his family move to China where they live until
returning to the U.S. in 1969 to contest the kidnapping charges which
are eventually dropped in 1976. Ironically, the Williams family return
is paid for by the U.S. government which wants to talk with Williams
about Communist China.
For more information:
It is a true-ism of the era that as you travel from the north to the
south in 1961 the deeper grows the racism, the worse the poverty, and
the more brutal the repression. In the geography of the Freedom
Movement the south is divided into mental zones according to the
virulence of bigotry and oppression: the "Border States" (Delaware,
the urban areas of Maryland, Kentucky, Missiouri, Oklahoma); the "Mid
South" (Virginia, the East Shore of Maryland, North Carolina, Florida,
Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas); and the "Deep South" (South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana). And then there is Mississippi, in a
class by itself — the absolute nadir of racism,
violence, and poverty.
Duing the post-Depression decades of the 1940s and 1950s, most of the
South experiences enormous economic changes. "King Cotton" declines as
agriculture diversifies and mechanizes. In 1920, almost a 1,000,000
southern Blacks work in agriculture, by 1960 that number has declined
by 75% to around 250,000 — resulting in a huge
migration off the land into the cities both North and South. By 1960,
almost 60% of southern Blacks live in urban areas (compared to roughly
30% in 1930).
But those economic changes come slowly, if at all, to Mississippi
(and, to some extent, the Black Belt areas of Alabama, Georgia, and
Louisiana). In 1960, almost 70% of Mississippi Blacks still live in
rural areas, and more than a third (twice the percentage in the rest
of the South) work the land as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and farm
laborers. Mississippi is still
dominated — economically and
politically — by less than 100 plantation barons who
lord it over vast cotton fields worked by Black hand-labor using hoes
and fingers the way it was done in slavery times. And they are
determined to keep that labor cheap and docile.
The arch-racist Senator James Eastland provides a clear example of the
economic riches that underlie racism in Mississippi. In 1961, his huge
plantation in Sunflower County produces 5,394 bales of cotton. He
sells this cotton for around $890,000 (equivilent to about $5,850,000
in 2006 dollars). It costs Eastland about $566,000 to produce that
cotton for a profit of $324,000 (equal to $2,130,000 in 2006). This
represents profit of 57% (for comparison, a modern corporation is
doing very well if it returns 10-15% profit). The Black men, women,
and children who labor in his fields under the blazing
sun — plowing, planting, hoeing, and
picking — are paid no more than 30 cents an hour
(equal to $1.97/hour in 2006). That's $3.00 for a 10 hour day, $18.00
for a six-day week.
In 1960, the median income for Blacks in Mississippi is just $1,444
(equal to $9,600 in 2006), the median income for Mississippi whites is
three times higher. More than 85% of Mississippi Blacks live below the
official Federal poverty line. Segregated education for Blacks is
severely limited, the average funding for Black schools is less than a
quarter of that spent to educate white students, and in rural areas
the ratio is even more skewed, Pike County, for example, expends
$30.89 to educate each white student and only $0.76 cents per Black
pupil. It is no surprise then that only 7% of Mississippi Blacks
finish high school, and in the rural areas where children are sent to
the fields early in life, functional illiteracy is widespread.
This system of agricultural feudalism is maintained by Jim Crow laws,
state repression, white terrorism, and the systematic
disenfranchisement of Blacks. While whites outnumber Blacks in
Mississippi overall, the ratio of Blacks to whites is higher than in
any other state in the union. And in a number of rural counties Blacks
outnumber whites, in some cases by large majorities. Given these
demographic realities, the power elites know that to maintain white
supremecy they have to prevent Blacks from voting, and they are
ruthless in doing so — using rigged literacy tests,
poll taxes, white-only primaries, arrests, economic retaliation, Klan
violence, and assasinations (on average seven Blacks have been lynched
or assasinated each year in Mississippi since the 1880s). In 1961,
less than 7% of Mississippi Blacks are registered to
vote — in many Black-majority counties not a single
Black citizen is registered — and across the state of
those few on the voter rolls, only a handful dare to actually cast a
ballot.
By June of '61, Freedom Rides are rolling across the South and news
stories documenting southern racism and student courage are blazing
around the globe — humiliating President Kennedy, the
self-declared leader of the "Free World." The Movement rejects the
administration's call for a "cooling off" period and the rides
continue. JFK thinks that if the students turn to voter registration
rather than sit-ins and Freedom Rides there will be an end to white
opposition, racist violence, and embarrasing media attention. Behind
the scenes, he arranges for financial grants from the Field, New
World, Stern Family, and Taconic foundations for voter registration,
and he promises that the Federal government will provide protection
and legal support for Blacks engaged in registering voters if the
students will just stop protesting.
Under the auspices of the non-profit Southern Regional Council (SRC),
the Voter Education Project (VEP) is established by the NAACP, CORE, SCLC,
and SNCC to receive the foundation money and disperse it to the
organizations doing the work on the ground. Directed by Wiley Branton,
the VEP begins operations in early 1962. Between April of '62 and the
end of '64 almost $900,000 (equal to $5,700,000 in 2006 dollars) is
distributed to Movement organizations across the south. Under
subsequent directors Randolph Blackwell, Vernon Jordon, and John
Lewis, the VEP continues until 1968.
With the state of Tennessee on the verge of shutting down the
Highlander Center as a
"subversive organization," a home has to be found for the
Citizenship Schools project led by
Septima Clarke. Using VEP money, SCLC agrees to incorporate and expand
the program, adding Dorothy Cotton and Andrew Young to the leadership
team and moving the location from Highlander to Dorchester Center in
Georgia. SCLC also sets up a seven-state voter registration program
under Jack O'Dell.
SNCC is initially divided over the question
of voter registration versus direct-action. But by 1962, it has active
voter-registration projects underway in Mississippi, Alabama, and
Georgia. Other Movement organizations also begin devoting more
attention to voter registration. Registering voters was always an
NAACP focus, but in the deep South little progress had been made
against the entrenched opposition of the white power-structure. Now
the availability of foundation money combined with the increasing
activity — and increasing militancy — of
NAACP youth groups opens new opportunities. CORE too, is interested in
adding registration to its programs, and they use VEP funds to begin
building up a Southern field staff in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida,
and the Carolinas.
In its first two and a half years (mid-1962 through the end of 1964)
VEP funded projects manage to register large numbers of Blacks in the
upper and mid-southern states. But no progress is made in the five
deep south states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and
South Carolina. It is only after passage of the
Voting Rights Act in August of
1965 that significant numbers are registered in those states.
Kennedy's plan to tame the Movement shatters on the rock of racist
intransigence. To his astonishment, he discovers that the southern
white power structure is even more furiously — and
violently — opposed to Blacks gaining the right to vote
than they were to desegregating lunch counters and bus stations.
Instead of diminishing, news stories of brutality, bombings, and
murders increase as the Klan and White Citizen Councils use every form
of terrorism and economic retaliation to prevent Blacks from voting.
And administration promises that the federal government will provide
legal support, and protect Blacks who try to register, are not kept.
The Department of Justice and FBI do almost nothing as a reign of
terror — arrests and other forms of police harassment,
shootings, assaults, fire bombings, murder, and economic
warfare — is unleashed against Blacks across the
South.
Back in the summer of 1960,
Amzie Moore, Medgar Evers, and other local Black leaders in
Mississippi told Bob Moses that they needed help with voter
registration more than demonstrations against segregation. He promised
he would return in the summer of '61, and in July he begins voter
registration work in McComb. Staunch, long-
time, Movement supporters such as Harry Belafonte and many of SNCC's
student leaders also believe that SNCC should focus on voter
registration rather than direct-action such as sit-ins and Freedom
Rides. They argue that poor, rural Blacks have no money for lunch
counters or other public facilities and what they need most is
political power that in Mississippi has to begin with winning the
right to vote.
Other SNCC leaders — many just released from Parchman
Prison and Hinds County Jail — argue that the Freedom
Rides and other forms of direct-action must continue. The protests are
gaining momentum and bringing the Movement into the darkest corners of
the deep south, raising awareness, building courage, and inspiring
young and old. They are deeply suspicious of Kennedy's demand that
they switch from demonstrations to voter registration, and they are
unwilling to abandon the tactics that have brought the Movement so far
in so short a time.
In August, the issue comes to a head when SNCC meets at the Highlander
Center in Tennessee. After three days of passionate debate, SNCC is
split right down the middle — half favor continuing
direct-action, the other half favor switching to voter registration.
Ella Baker proposes a compromise — do both. Her
suggestion is adopted. Diane Nash is chosen to head direct-action
efforts and Charles Jones is chosen to head voter registration
activity. Both groups send activists to join Bob Moses in McComb.
Almost unnoticed in the fires of the Freedom Rides and the heat of
debate, SNCC as an organization is rapidly evolving away from its
campus/student roots. More and more SNCC activists — on
both sides of the issue — are leaving school to become
full-time freedom fighters. With money raised by Belafonte, first
Charles Sherrod, then Bob Moses, then others are hired as SNCC staff
devoting their lives to the struggle in the rural areas and small
towns of the south. In September, James Forman becomes SNCC's
Executive Director to coordinate and lead far-flung projects and a
growing field staff. Increasingly, it will be the SNCC field staff
from projects in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Virginia and
Maryland who will shape and lead SNCC in the years to come.
And as it so often turns out to be the case when committed activists
passionately disagree over strategy, both sides are proven correct.
Both direct-action and voter registration are needed. Each supports
and strengthens the other. The determination and courage of student
protesters inspires and encourages their elders, and the growing
political power of adults organized around the right to vote supports
and sustains the young demonstrators.
An important point. As Movement veterans, we look back today
and recall that SNCC was torn between direct-action and voter
registration. But instead of splitting the organization apart into two
rival groups, they forged a unifying compromise. By respecting that
fellow activists could passionately disagree over strategy and
tactics — yet remain allies — they
strengthened SNCC and the Movement as a whole. Unfortunately, in later
years, some radicals and leftists in the North all too often adopted
the opposite approach, treating anyone who disagreed with them as
enemies — thereby splitting organizations and
undermining their effectiveness.
See Voter Registration & Direct-action in
McComb MS below for continuation.
For more information:
See Direct-Action or Voter
Registration? above for preceding events.
Voter Registration
In 1961, Black voter registration in the deep South is entirely
controlled by the white power structure.
Voter registration procedures — which vary somewhat
from state to state and county to county — are based on
an application and so-called "literacy
test" that prospective voters must pass in order to be registered.
The system is designed to allow the county Voter Registrars (all of
whom are white, of course) to rig the outcome however they wish.
Whites are allowed to register regardless of their education (or lack
thereof), while registration applications from most Blacks are denied
even if they answer every question correctly.
In McComb, for example, the "literacy test" consists in part of the
Registrar choosing one of the 285 sections of the Mississippi
constitution and asking the applicant to read it aloud and interpret
it to his satisfaction. He can assign an easy section,
or a dense block of legal baffelgab that even law professors cannot
agree on. Then it is entirely up to the Registrar to decide if the
applicant's reading and interpretation are adequate. Voters are also
required to be of "good moral character," and again the Registrar has
sole authority to decide who does, or does not, posses sufficient
"moral character."
In urban areas of the deep south, a few token
Blacks — usually ministers, teachers, doctors, and
other professionals — are allowed to register, but
never enough to affect the outcome of an election. In the rural
counties, particularly those with large Black populations, only a
handful — or none at all — are
permitted to register.
Blacks who attempt to register in defiance of the white power
structure are harassed and threatened. They are fired from their jobs
and evicted from their homes. Many are beaten. Some are murdered.
See Voting Rights for more
information on literacy tests and denial of voting rights.)
The McComb Project
In July, NAACP leader Reverend C.C. Bryant invites Bob Moses to begin
a voter registration project in McComb, the main town of Pike County.
Moses is soon joined by SNCC members John Hardy and Reginald Robinson.
Rev. Bryant introduces Moses to NAACP leader E.W. Steptoe, and the
project spreads to cover adjacent Amite and Walthall Counties.
Before begining work, Bob Moses writes to the U.S. Department of
Justice (DoJ) asking what the Federal response will be if Blacks are
prevented from registering. In line with the Kennedy administration's
promise to defend voting rights if the students
will turn away from direct-action, the DoJ replies that it will
"vigorously enforce" Federal statutes forbidding the use of
intimidation, threats, and coercion against voter aspirants.
In August, SNCC workers in McComb begin teaching Blacks the
complexities of the voter registration process. All 21 questions on
the form have to be studied and understood, and all 285 sections of
the Mississippi constitution have to be mastered. After attending the
class, 16 local Blacks journey through a century of fear to the Pike
County courthouse in Magnolia. Six manage to pass the test and be
registered.
More SNCC workers arrive in McComb direct from the
Highlander meeting: Ruby Doris Smith, Marion
Barry, Charles Jones, and others. In late August, after training in
the tactics of Nonviolent Resistance by the SNCC direct-action
veterans, two local teenagers — Hollis Watkins and
Curtis Hayes (Muhammad), both of whom go on to become SNCC field
secretaries of renown — sit-in at the local Woolworth's
lunch counter.
On the last day of August, Bob Moses takes two Blacks to the Amite
County courthouse in Liberty Mississippi. He is brutally beaten in the
street by Bill Caston, cousin to the sheriff and son-in-law of E. H.
Hurst the State Representative. That night, more than 200 Blacks
attend the first Civil Rights Movement mass meeting in McComb history
to protest the arrest of the students and the beating of Moses. They
vow to continue the struggle.
Brenda Travis, a 16 year old high school student in McComb, canvasses
the streets with the SNCC voter registration workers. To awaken and
inspire the adults, she leads two other students on a sit-in. For the
crime of ordering a hamburger, she is sentenced to a year in the state
juvenile prison and expelled from school.
Moses files charges against Caston who is quickly found innocent by an
all-white jury. But this is the first time since Reconstruction that a
Black man has filed charges against a white for racial violence in
Amite County.
SNCC workers John Hardy and Travis Britt are beaten by whites and
arrested on trumped up charges when they bring Blacks to the
courthouse to register in Walthall and Amite counties. In Amite
County, Herbert Lee is one of those working with Moses. In late
September, he is murdered by State
Representative E. H. Hurst. In early October, more than 100 Black
high-school students march in McComb to protest Lee's killing and the
expulsion of Brenda Travis. When they kneel in prayer, they are
arrested, as are the SNCC staff who are with them. Bob Moses, Chuck
McDew, and Bob Zellner (SNCC's first white field secretary) are
beaten. The SNCC workers are charged with "Contributing to the
delinquency of minors," a serious felony.
More than 100 students boycott the Black high-school rather than sign
a mandatory pledge that they will not participate in civil rights
activity. SNCC sets up "Nonviolent High" for the boycotting students
with Moses teaching math, Dion Diamond teaching science, and Chuck
McDew teaching history. This becomes the forerunner of the "Freedom
Schools" that in years to come spread across the state.
Late in October, an all-white jury convicts the SNCC members on the
"Contributing" charge. Their attorneys appeal, but bail is set at
$14,000 (equal to $92,000 in 2006 dollars). Unable to raise that huge
amount, they languish in prison. With their SNCC teachers in jail,
Nonviolent High cannot continue, and the boycotting students are
accepted by Campbell Junior College in Jackson.
Meanwhile, arrests, beatings, and shootings continue. CORE Freedom
Riders are brutally attacked by a white mob when they try to integrate
the McComb Greyhound station. Paul Potter and Tom Hayden of Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) are dragged from their car and beaten
in the street when they come to McComb to show support for the
Movement. Shotgun blasts from a Klan nightrider almost kill Dion
Diamond and John Hardy.
Despite the many promises of protection for voter registration by
Kennedy and the Justice Department, the FBI does nothing, and the
DoJ's legal efforts are feeble and ineffective. The arrests, the reign
of terror, and the brazen murder of Herbert Lee by a state official,
all take their toll. The McComb-area voter registration drive is
suppressed — for the moment.
In November, Bob Moses manages to slip a message from prison to SNCC
headquarters in Atlanta:
Finally, in December, SNCC manages to raise the bail money and the
jailed SNCC staff are released on appeal. They are not deterred.
Building on the lessons learned in McComb they plan to move the voter
registration campaign into the Delta — the toughest,
most segregated corner of Mississippi.
See Council of Federated
Organizations Formed in Mississippi for continuation.
For more information:
Herbert Lee, a Black farmer with 9 children, is a founding member of
the NAACP in Amite County Mississippi and one of the few rural Blacks
who dares to work on voter registration with Bob Moses and the
McComb Project. State Assemblyman E.H. Hurst
(white, of course) lives across the street from Lee. They are friends
and neighbors. But trying to register Black voters is a challenge to
white supremecy that Hurst cannot accept and he orders Lee to stop.
On the morning of September 25, 1961, Lee takes a truckload of cotton
to a cotten gin in Liberty Mississippi, the Amite County seat. Hurst
follows him. According to witnesses, Lee is sitting in his truck when
Hurst angrily walks up, begins arguing, and pulls out a pistol.
"I'm not fooling around this time, I really mean business,"
shouts Hurst. "Put the gun down," responds Lee. "I won't
talk to you unless you put the gun down." Lee slides out of his
truck on the other side. Hurst runs around the truck and shoots Lee in
the head, killing him instantly.
The Amite County Sheriff surrounds Hurst with armed
men — not to keep him from escaping but to protect him
from possible retaliation. An all-white Coroner's Jury is summoned.
Hurst claims that Lee attacked him with a tire iron and he shot in
self-defense. Louis Allen and other witnesses are pressured to confirm
Hurst's claim, they know that the same thing can happen to them if
they disobey. The jury accepts the "self-defense"
story — that's the typical result when a white
Southerner kills a Black man. Hurst never spends a day in jail.
See Louis Allen Murdered
for continuation.
For more information:
See Baltimore Sit-ins
& Protests and Freedom Rides and for
preceding events.
As countries in Africa and Asia free themselves from colonial rule,
they send diplomats to Washington and the United Nations in New York
City. Dark-skinned ambassadors traveling between New York and DC
through segregated Maryland are denied service and subjected to the
same Jim Crow humiliations as American Blacks. As the owner of one
establishment explained after refusing to serve the ambassador from
Chad and then physically assaulting him: "He looked like just an
ordinary nigra to me." All this embarrasses the U.S government,
and undercuts the State Department's effort to woo emerging nations
into the "Free World" and prevent them from aligning with the Soviets.
US-1 and US-40 are the main highways into DC from the north. When the
Freedom Rides force the issue of segregation
in inter-state travel to national and international attention, the
Feds pressure restaurants on those routes to serve African diplomats,
and gas stations to allow them to use the cleaner "white" restrooms.
But to be recognized as foreign dignitaries they have to wear
traditional garb.
Students at nearby Black colleges dress as Africans and are served.
This sparks CORE's Route 40 Project which systematically desegregates
facilities for all Blacks regardless of the clothes they wear. Also
involved in the Route 40 project is Baltimore's Civic Interest Group
(CIG), a SNCC-affiliated coalition of student activists from Morgan
State and other local colleges. The project uses a variety of
nonviolent, direct-action tactics including sit-ins, consumer
boycotts, pickets and other protests. When CORE threatens a massive
Freedom Motorcade in early November, most Route 40 restaurants agree
to desegregate.
CORE then expands down US-1 into Virginia and North Carolina
(see
Freedom Highways in the Tarheel
State).
CIG begins organizing "freedom rides" into Maryland's East Shore
(see Cambridge
MD — 1962, and
Maryland Eastern Shore
Project).
For more information:
In October, SNCC field secretaries Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagan
travel from McComb to Albany Georgia (pronounced All-BENNY) to begin a
voter registration project. Albany — the bustling
commercial hub of Southwest Georgia and seat of Dougherty
County — is 40% Black but few are registered to vote.
Adjacent to Dougherty are Black-majority "plantation" counties Baker,
Lee, Mitchell, Sumter, and Terrell where fear lies heavy on the land
and Black sharecroppers and day laborers endure conditions of feudal
semi-slavery toiling in cotton fields and pecan groves.
Sherrod wrote:
Now joined by Charles Jones, SNCC begins working with students at
Albany State College for Negroes and the local high schools. They set
up an office in the Black section of town where they conduct voter
registration classes for the adults and teach the strategies and
tactics of Nonviolent Resistance to the young. Nearby Shiloh Baptist
and Bethel AME churches open their doors for meetings. "We drew
young people from the colleges, trade schools, and high schools, and
from the street," said Sherrod. "They were searching for a
meaning in life... Every night we grew larger and larger. But we had
not been training in nonviolence in a vacuum. November 1 was to be the
date."
November 1st is the day the Interstate Commerce Commission's new
prohibition against segregated bus terminals is to go into effect.
This is the ruling won by the Freedom Rides.
The Albany bus terminal is located in the Black section of town and on
November 1st — with a neighborhood crowd
watching — nine Black students attempt to use the
terminal's "white-only" facilities. As planned, they leave without
being arrested when ordered out by the police and then file immediate
complaints with the ICC under the new ruling.
The explicit defiance inherent in the student's action galvanizes
Albany's Black community. A coalition of the Ministerial Alliance,
NAACP, Federation of Women's Clubs, the Negro Voters League, and SNCC
meet to form the Albany Movement — whose goal is ending
all forms of segregation and discrimination, not just that relating to
inter-state travel.
Significantly, each organization surrenders some of its individual
identity to become part of a common united organization. While they
mostly agree on goals, they — like all
organizations — have jealousies, rivalries,
disagreements over strategy and tactics, and all the other human
elements that make achieving unity in action so difficult. SNCC's
galvanizing presence, the courage of the local students, and the
leadership provided by Sherrod, Reagan, and Jones make it possible for
these disparate groups to come together in The Albany Movement.
Organizing, voter-registration classes, and training in Nonviolent
Resistance pick up momentum. On November 22, when students go to the
bus terminal to return home for the Thanksgiving holiday, an Albany
State dean — whose job depends on the all-white Georgia
Board of Regents — is stationed there to direct them to
the "Colored" waiting room. Five young people — 3 from
the NAACP Youth Council and 2 from Albany State — defy
the dean, a century of oppression, and the orders of Police Chief
Prichett to leave the white waiting room. They are arrested.
After the holiday, when the students are released from jail, a mass
meeting — the first in Albany
history — packs Mt. Zion Baptist church to protest the
arrests, segregation, and a lifetime of subservience. At the end of
the meeting they rise to sing "We Shall Overcome." Student
song-leader Bernice Johnson (Reagan) describes the effect, "When I
opened my mouth and began to sing, there was a force and power within
myself I had never heard before. Somehow this music ... released a
kind of power and required a level of concentrated energy I did not
know I had."
Albany State students Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall are expelled for
disobeying the dean's orders to use the "Colored" waiting room.
Students march to the college President's office to protest the
expulsions and 40 more are expelled for daring to disagree with the
administration.
Early in December, eight SNCC Freedom Riders (4 Black, 4 white) led by
SNCC's new Executive Director James Forman are arrested after
integrating the Albany train station, along with 3 Albany Movement
activists who are there to greet them. But Chief Prichett does not
charge them for violating segregation, instead they are charged with
"Disturbing the Peace" after they leave the station. Bond is set at
$200 each for a total of $2200 [equal to $1300 each and a total of
$14,300 in 2006 dollars]. These huge sums are almost impossible for
the impoverished Black community to raise.
On the day of their trial, 267 college and high school students march
in nonviolent protest. They are all arrested. Inspired by the young
peoples' courage, Marion King — wife of Albany Movement
leader Slater King (no relation to Martin Luther
King) — leads a protest prayer at City Hall. She and
the others — mostly adults — are
arrested, as is her husband who leads a similar prayer protest. Two
hundred more are arrested on another nonviolent protest march. Police
Chief Prichett states, "We can't tolerate the NAACP or the SNCC or
any other nigger organization to take over this town with mass
demonstrations."
With the Albany jails overflowing, Prichett transfers arrested
demonstrators — who are guilty of nothing more than
exercising their Constitutional right to free speech, and have not
been convicted of any crime — to lockups in the
surrounding plantation counties notorious for police brutality and
abuse of prisoners. For some adults with families and jobs, the $100
bail is posted, but money for bonds is desperately short and there is
no way to get majority released.
Georgia Governor Vandiver sends in National Guard troops to suppress
the growing freedom movement. With close to 600 already arrested, no
money left for bail, and facing the National Guard, the Albany
Movement asks Dr. King and SCLC for support. More than 1500 people
pack both Shiloh and Mt. Zion churches (across the street from each
other) to hear King's address. The next day King and Abernathy lead
265 marchers to City Hall. They are all arrested, bringing the total
number of arrests to over 750. Along with others, Dr. King is
transferred to Sumter County jail in Americus. Enough bail money is
scraped up to free a few leaders to continue the struggle and raise
funds, but King announces that he will remain incarcerated over
Christmas to protest segregation and denial of basic human rights.
With King in jail, the glare of world media focuses on Albany. A
verbal agreement is announced between some Albany Movement leaders and
a few white officials. In return for the Albany Movement halting the
demonstrations and Dr. King leaving town, all protesters except the
original Freedom Riders are released without bail, Albany agrees to
abide by the ICC order ending segregation of inter-state travel
facilities, and the city promises to address grievances of the Black
community in the near future. SNCC criticizes the
truce — the city's vague, verbal promises of future
consideration are too little to warrant ending the direct-action
protests.
The white power structure fails to follow through on its promises and
the truce soon breaks down. In January of 1962, 18 year old Ola Mae
Quarterman is arrested for sitting in the front of a municiple bus.
Blacks boycott the bus company and it is put out of business. SNCC
workers are arrested for integrating the Trailways terminal, and the
City Commission denies the Albany Movement's petition for redress of
grievances.
In March, the original Freedom Riders arrested in December go on
trial. Charles Sherrod is beaten to the floor for sitting in the
"white" section at the front of the courtroom, and white SNCC
activists Bob Zellner, Per Laurson, Sandra & Tom Hayden are
violently dragged from the courtroom when they sit in the "Colored"
section at the rear.
In the following months, as spring turns into summer, pickets urging
people to boycott stores that refuse to hire Blacks are arrested, as
are those who participate in lunch counter sit-ins. Students trying to
use the "white-only" city library, park, and swimming pool are
arrested. Week after week arrests continue, mounting to over a
hundred.
Violence against peaceful, nonviolent protesters also increases.
Marion King, five months pregnant, is beaten unconscious by a
sheriff's deputy and the child is lost; SNCC worker Bill Hanson's jaw
is broken while he's in jail; and C.B. King — brother
of Slater King, and Southwest Georgia's only Black
lawyer — is brutally beaten by Dougherty County Sheriff
Cull Campbell who brags, "Yeah, I knocked hell out of the
son-of-a-bitch, and I'll do it again. I wanted him to know ... I'm a
white man and he's a damn nigger."
In July, Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy are sentenced to $178 or 45 days
in jail for leading the march back in December. They refuse to pay the
fine. Marches, demonstrations, and arrests increase. Again the glare
of national publicity focuses on Albany. King and Abernathy are
released when an "unidentified person" anonymously pays their fine.
Says Abernathy, "I've been thrown out of lots of places in my day,
but never before have I been thrown out of jail."
Late in July, a Federal judge appointed by Kennedy issues an
injunction against mass marches. SNCC argues that the injunction
should be ignored, but Dr. King reluctantly decides that he has to
obey a Federal court order because it is Federal court orders that are
(very, very slowly) forcing school desegregation. Though marches and
protests led by SNCC and others continue, and the injunction is
eventually lifted, it slows momentum and weakens the movement. In
early August, Dr. King withdraws from Albany without having won any
specific desegregation victories from the Albany power elites.
Demonstrations, sit-ins, protests, and arrests continue in Albany
through 1963 and 1964, though not in the mass numbers of 1961-1962.
The city library is finally desegregated by court order, though the
chairs are removed to prevent Blacks and whites sitting together. And
in early 1964 the city finally repeals all segregation ordinances.
In the years after the Albany protests of 1961-62, segregationist
groups all over the South invite Chief Pritchett (a graduate of the
FBI National Academy) to consult with them and speak on his tactics of
suppressing Black protest. He describes his methods as
"nonviolence" — meaning he orders his cops to avoid
and prevent the kind of bloody physical brutality that attracted media
attention during the sit-ins and Freedom Rides. Though arresting
people for peacefully exercising their Constitutionally protected
free-speech rights is a form of violent
repression — and holding them in prison is also an act
of violent coercion — the media accepts his
self-serving distortion of reality and lauds him as the South's
"nonviolent" lawman. Lacking dramatic images of violence, the press
loses interest in the Albany struggle for justice. And when Dr. King
withdraws from Albany without having won specific concessions from the
city, the national press declares it a "defeat."
As Movement veterans, we note the following about the Albany Movement:
Out of the Albany Movement emerge the SNCC Freedom
Singers — initially Rutha Harris, Bernice Johnson
(Reagan), Charles (Chico) Neblett, and Cordell Reagan, later joined by
other SNCC song leaders including Bertha Gober and Emory Harris from
Albany, Wazir Peacock and Matt Jones from Mississippi, Betty Mae Fikes
from Alabama, and many others. Song leaders first, performers second,
the Freedom Singers spread the Movement song and spirit in mass
meetings and protests across the South, and are instrumental in SNCC
fundraising efforts in the North including sold-out performances at
New York's Carnegie Hall.
But to the Black community of Albany, their Movement was not defeated.
As summed up on the Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum website:
Historian and activist Howard Zinn concluded:
For more information: See Savannah Sitins &
Boycott for previous events.
After a 19-month boycott (March 1960-October 1961) of white-owned
merchants, the city agrees to desegregate a number of public
facilities and the boycott is ended.
See Savannah GA, Movement
for continuation.
For more information:
Aaron Henry — President of the Mississippi state NAACP,
a pharmacist and drugstore owner — and the Coahoma
County NAACP organize an effective Christmas shopping boycott in
Clarksdale, the county seat. Coahoma is a Black-majority county (68%
Black, 31% white) but the white-owned stores refuse to hire Blacks for
anything other than the most menial and low-paying jobs. The boycott
economically cripples the white merchants, but they refuse to even
meet with Black leaders. Aaron Heny and half a dozen other Black
leaders are arrested and convicted for "Conspiring to withold trade,"
Henry is arrested and convicted on a phoney "morals" charge. The
convictions are appealed and the boycott continues.
See Baton Rouge Sit-ins &
Student Strike for previous events.
With the assistance of New Orleans CORE leaders Dave Dennis, Doris
Castle, Julia Aaron and Jerome Smith, Southern University (SU)
students Ronnie Moore, Weldon Rougeau and Patricia Tate begin
organizing a new CORE chapter at SU in October. Early in December,
they ask Baton Rouge's major downtown merchants to negotiate with them
regarding segregation. The stores refuse to meet with them, and CORE
launches a merchant boycott similar to those underway in
New Orleans.
In mid-December, 14 CORE activists — 7 men and 7
women — are arrested for picketing in support of the
boycott. Among them are Theda Ambrose, Jarvis Thompson, Janetta
Gilliam, Claudia Smith, and Beverly Redford. All 14 are incarcerated
in East Baton Rouge Parish Jail for a month until their release in
mid-January. In immediate response to their arrest, 3,500 Black
students attend a protest rally at SU. On December 15th, 1,200
students march five miles to the state capitol to protest the arrests
and segregation. The cops attack the marchers with dogs and tear-gas.
More than 50 students are arrested.
With the other CORE leaders in jail, D'Army Bailey leads 3,000
students on a march to the campus residence of SU President Felton
Clark who promises not to expel students arrested on sit-ins as he had
done the previous year. The next
day the Louisiana Board of Education bans all student
demonstrations — on and off campus — at
all Louisiana colleges. Clark closes SU four days early for the
Christmas break.
Early in January 1962, U.S. Federal Court Judge Gordon
West — a segregationist appointed by
Kennedy — issues a sweeping injunction against CORE
banning all forms of protest of any kind. When students return to SU
in mid-January, they discover that seven CORE leaders have been
expelled. A thousand students protest the expulsions. At a faculty
convocation next day, SU President Clark denounces the demonstrators
as "hoodlums" and "anarchists."
State police troopers occupy the campus to quell any further protests
and 40 more students are expelled. Judge West's unconstitutional
injunction is not overturned by a higher court until 1964. The
combination of repression by the state police, a Federal court
injunction, and mass expulsion of students who participate in the
Movement succeeds in suppressing student activism at Southern
University until protests again erupt in 1969.
After their expulsions, some CORE leaders become full-time field
secretaries, and other expelled SU students are hired for voter
registration projects with money distributed by the
Voter Education Project (VEP).
See "Criminal Anarchy" in
Louisiana for continuation.
For more information:
Rock Hill SC, "Jail-No-Bail" Sit-ins (Feb-Mar)
Web:
Rock Hill & Charlotte Sit-ins (J. Charles Jones)
Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: 1960 Sit-In Movement (Andrews & Biggs — Oxford Univ, UK)
Tougaloo Nine and Jackson State Protest (Mar)
Books: Mississippi Movement for partial list of books.
Web links:
When Youth Protest: The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (Mississippi Historical Society)
Jackson Municipal Library (Mississippi Heritage Trust)
Mississippi Movement
Freedom Rides (May-Nov)
Freedom Riders — 1961
Photos
Map
The First Ride
Violence in Anniston & Birmingham
SNCC Students Resume the Freedom Ride
Mobs in Montgomery
Arrests Jackson
Freedom Rides Roll Across the South
A New Generation of Leaders
Freedom Rides — Important Points
The First Ride
Anniston & Birmingham AL
SNCC Students Resume the Freedom Ride
Mobs in Montgomery AL
Arrests in Jackson
Freedom Rides Roll Across the South
A New Generation of Leaders
Freedom Rides — Important Points
"
At the end of 1960 SNCC was still a loosely organized
committee of part-time student activists, uncertain of their
roles in the southern struggle and generally conventional in
their political orientations. Yet within months, SNCC became a
cadre of full-time organizers and protesters. Its militant
identity was forged during the 'freedom rides,' a series of
assaults on southern segregation that for the first time brought
student protesters into conflict with the Kennedy
administration." [1]
Books: Freedom Rides
Web:
Freedom Rides (this website)
Freedom Rides (other websites)
Frame-up, Escape, & Exile of Robert F. Williams (1961-1969)
Books: Robert Williams, Self-Defense, & Monroe Movement
Web: Robert F. Williams, Monroe NC Movement, & Self-Defense
Mississippi — the Eye of the Storm
Voter Education Project (1961-1968)
Direct-Action or Voter Registration? (Summer)
Books: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Web links: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Voter Registration & Direct-action in McComb MS (Aug-Oct)
We are smuggling this note from the drunk tank of the county
jail in Magnolia, Mississippi. Twelve of us are here, sprawled out
along the concrete bunker; Curtis Hayes, Hollis Watkins, Ike Lewis and
Robert Talbert, four veterans of the bunker, are sitting up
talking — mostly about girls; Charles McDew ("Tell the
story") is curled into the concrete and the wall; Harold Robinson,
Stephen Ashley, James Wells, Lee Chester Vick, Leotus Eubanks, and
Ivory Diggs lay cramped on the cold bunks; I'm sitting with smuggled
pen and paper, thinking a little, writing a little; Myrtis Bennett and
Janie Campbell are across the way wedded to a different icy
cubicle.
Later on, Hollis will lead out with a clear tenor into a freedom
song, Talbert and Lewis will supply jokes, and McDew will discourse on
the history of the Black man and the Jew. McDew — a
black by birth, a Jew by choice, and a revolutionary by
necessity — has taken on the deep hates and deep loves
which America and the world reserve for those who dare to stand in a
strong sun and cast a sharp shadow. ...
This is Mississippi, the middle of the iceberg. Hollis is
leading off with his tenor, "Michael row the boat ashore, Alleluia;
Christian brothers don't be slow, Alleluia; Mississippi's next to go,
Alleluia." There is a tremor in the middle of the
iceberg — from a stone that the builders rejected.
[2]
Film: Freedom Song.
Books: Mississippi Movement for partial list of books.
Web links:
Mississippi Movement & MFDP A Discussion
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Mississippi Movement
McComb MS Movement
Herbert Lee Murdered
Books: Mississippi Movement for partial list of books.
Web links:
Mississippi Movement & MFDP A Discussion
Mississippi Movement
McComb MS Movement
Oh Freedom Over Me, PBS
Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader
Martyrs of the Movement for web links.
Desegregate Route 40 Project (Aug-Dec)
Web: Baltimore &
Maryland
Document: CORE Route 40
Project Flyer [PDF]
Albany GA, Movement (Oct 1961- Aug 1962)
Photos,
Additional photos
When we first came to Albany, the people were afraid, really
afraid. Sometimes we'd walk down the streets and the little kids would
call us Freedom Riders and the people walking in the same direction
would go across the street from us, because they were afraid; they
didn't want to be connected with us in any way. ... Many of the
ministers were afraid to let us use their churches, afraid that their
churches would be bombed, that their homes would be stoned. There was
fear in the air, and if we were to make progress we knew that we must
cut through that fear. We thought and we thought. ... and the students
were the answer. [3]
[
Years later it is revealed that the fines were paid by Albany
Mayor Asa Kelley as a ploy to divide the movement and diffuse media
attention on King's imprisonment.]
Albany Movement — Important Points
There were weaknesses in Albany, and a share of the
responsibility belongs to each of us who participated. ... Human
beings with all their faults and strengths constitute the mechanism of
a social movement. They must make mistakes and learn from them, make
more mistakes and learn anew. They must taste defeat as well as
success, and discover how to live with each. We attacked the political
power structure instead of the economic power structure. You don't win
against a political power structure where you don't have the votes.
... The mistake I made there was to protest against segregation
generally rather than against a single and distinct facet of it. Our
protest was so vague that we got nothing, and the people were left
very depressed and in despair. ... But I don't mean that our work in
Albany ended in failure. ... When we planned our strategy for
Birmingham months later, we spent many hours assessing Albany and
trying to learn from its errors. Our appraisals not only helped to
make our subsequent tactics more effective, but revealed that Albany
was far from an unqualified failure. Though lunch counters remained
segregated, thousands of Negroes were added to the voting registration
rolls. [4]
From King's perspective the Albany Movement was a failure and he
admitted as much. But African Americans in Albany disagreed. Because
King failed did not mean that the Movement failed. SNCC field
secretary (and later Albany city commissioner) Charles Sherrod
remarked, "Now I can't help how Dr. King might have felt, or...any
of the rest of them in SCLC, NAACP, CORE, any of the groups, but as
far as we were concerned, things moved on. We didn't skip one
beat." In fact, two months after King left Albany, the success of
black voter registration efforts led to African American businessman
Thomas Chatmon's securing enough votes in his election for a city
commission seat to force a run-off election. And the following spring,
the city commission removed all the segregation statutes from its
books. [5]
It has often been said, by journalists, by scholars, that
Albany, Georgia was a defeat for the Movement, because there was no
immediate victory over racial segregation in the city. That always
seemed to me a superficial assessment, a mistake often made in
evaluating protest movements. Social movements may have many
"defeats" — failing to achieve objectives in the short
run — but in the course of the struggle the strength of
the old order begins to erode, the minds of people begin to change;
the protesters are momentarily defeated but not crushed, and have been
lifted, heartened by their ability to fight back. Albany was changed
forever by the tumultuous events of 1961 and 1962, however things
looked the same when the situation quieted down.
[6]
Books: Georgia Movement — Atlanta — Albany
Web: Albany, Americus, & SW Georgia Movements 1961-1964
Savannah Boycott Victory (Oct)
Christmas Boycott in Clarksdale MS (Dec)
Baton Rouge Student Protests (Dec 1961 - Jan 1962)
Books: Louisiana, Bogalusa, & New Orleans for partial list of books.
Web: Justice (CORE ~ Online Archive California)
1961 Quotation Sources:
1. In Struggle, SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960's
2. SNCC The New Abolitionists
3. SNCC The New Abolitionists
4. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr ~ M.L. King
Research Institute at Stanford University
5. Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum
6. You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train, by Howard Zinn. Beacon Press, 1994
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