|
|
1965 is the climactic year in the campaign — which some refer to as America's "Second Civil War" — to win voting rights for Black Americans.
Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar)
The March to Montgomery (Mar)
Confronting the Klan in Bogalusa With Nonviolence & Self-Defense (1965)
Mississippi Freedom Labor Union Founded (Jan)
Malcolm X Murdered in NY (Feb)
Lowndes County Freedom Organization Founded (Mar)
Oneal Moore Murdered (June)
SCOPE Summer Project (June-Aug)
Southern Courier Founded (July)
Freedom Information Service Founded (July)
Americus GA Protests (July)
Voting Rights Act (Aug)
Assasination of Jonathan Daniels (Aug)
Attempted Assasination of George Metcalfe (Aug)
Assembly of Un-Represented People DC (Aug)
ASCS Election Campaigns (Fall)
Crawfordville, GA, School Bus Struggle (Oct)
Natchez, MS, Movement (Oct)
Poor-People's Corporation Founded
The War on Poverty
Selma Photos
See The Selma Injunction for background and previous events.
See also Selma & the March to Montgomery for a discussion of the Selma events by Freedom Movement veterans.
Breaking the Selma Injunction
Jimmy Lee Jackson Murdered
Bloody Sunday, Selma
Rev. James Reeb Murdered
Students March in Montgomery
(To be written)
19 Days in March — Chronology (links are to Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement's "Selma & March to Montgomery" discussion)
March 7 Sunday.
"Bloody Sunday" march in Selma
SNCC's Mississippi staff comes to Selma
March 8 Monday. Injunction against marching to Montgomery
March 9 Tuesday.
"Turn-Around Tuesday" march in Selma
Tuskegee students call for "2nd Front"
SNCC vs SCLC Meeting
Ministers beaten, Rev. Reeb hospitalized
March 10 Wednesday.
"Berlin Wall" stops marches in Selma
Tuskegee students & SNCC arrive in Montgomery
Students march on Montgomery Capitol building
March 11 Thursday.
Rev. Reeb dies from the beating on Tuesday
"Berlin Wall" vigil continues in Selma
Confrontation At Dexter Church
March 12 Friday. "Berlin Wall" vigil continues in Selma
March 13 Saturday.
Boycott pickets in Selma
"Berlin Wall" vigil continues in Selma
March 14 Sunday.
"Berlin Wall" vigil continues in Selma
LBJ's "We Shall Overcome" speech calls for Voting Rights bill
March 15 Monday.
Court overturns "Berlin Wall,"
Reeb memorial mass march in Selma
Student march in Montgomery
March 16 Tuesday.
Student march attacked in Montgomery
Forman's angry speech to mass meeting in Montgomery
March 17 Wednesday.
Mass march to Montgomery courthouse
Student pickets arrested in Montgomery
Injunction against March to Montgomery lifted.
March 18. Thursday.
March to Montgomery organization & preparation
Demonstrations continue in Selma and Montgomery
March 19. Friday.
March to Montgomery organization & preparation
Demonstrations continue in Selma and Montgomery
March 20. Saturday.
March to Montgomery organization & preparation
Demonstrations continue in Selma and Montgomery
March 21-March 24 Sunday-Wednesday. The March to Montgomery
March 25 Thursday.
March and rally at the Alabama Capitol building
Murder of Viola Liuzzo
March to Montgomery Photos
See The Selma Injunction for background and previous events.
See also Selma & the March to Montgomery for a discussion of the Selma events by Freedom Movement veterans.
Selma-Montgomery March
Murder of Viola Luizzo
(To be written)
For more information:
Books: Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery
Web links:
Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery
Martyrs of the Movement
Documents:
SNCC ~ The General Condition of the Alabama Negro
Example Flyers From the Selma Voting Rights Campaign
Personal stories from the Selma Voting Rights Campaign:
Charles Bonner & Betty Fikes
Bruce Hartford
Eric Lerner
Gwen Patton Insurgent Memories
Wazir Peacock
Ruby Sales
Jean Wiley
See Deacons for Defense & Justice Founded for preceding events.
Contents
Bogalusa, Louisiana — "Klantown USA"
CORE Comes to Bogalusa
Deacons for Defense and Justice — Bogalusa Chapter
CORE and the Deacons Confront the Klan
Negotiations
The Klan Strikes Back
Murder of Deputy O'Neal Moore
Bloody Bogalusa
Bogalusa — Some Important Points
Wood pulp, paper and chemicals are the economic mainstays Washington Parish Louisiana. Back in 1906, the Great Southern Lumber Company bought 600,000 acres of virgin pine forest, built the world's largest sawmill, and founded the town of Bogalusa to serve it. During those mill years, Bogalusa was a classic company-town, Great Southern owned everything — houses, stores, electric utility, schools, even the segregated parks.
They also ran the government. The mill's general manager was the mayor and the police department took their orders from the company. In addition to the cops, Great Southern maintained a private army to enforce "labor discipline." When white and Black workers tried to form a biracial union in 1919 after World War I (with segregated locals as required by Louisiana law) the company organized racist whites into the Self-Preservation and Loyalty League (SPLL). Company gunmen and the SPLL assaulted union members, evicted them from company housing, burned private homes, kidnapped, and tortured organizers. Finally, to suppress the union and end interracial cooperation, they formed an armed posse of more than 150 men, attacked the union hall, and shot to death four union leaders.
In the late '30s, the last stands of virgin timber fell to the saws and the huge mill was torn down, it's scrap metal sold to Japan for use in their war of conquest against China. But Bogalusa survived because the logged-over acres had been replanted with fast-growing yellow pine which sustained paper-products and chemical plants built on the old mill site. In 1939, the new plants were unionized under the protection of the New Deal's Wagner Act (today, the National Labor Relations Act) into separate white and "Colored" locals, with whites holding the majority of the jobs — and all the better-paying positions.
By the 1960s, Bogalusa has evolved into a new kind of company town. The three big factories in the heart of town are now owned by Crown-Zellerbach (CZ), at this time one of the 100 largest corporations in the nation (today they are part of the Georgia-Pacific conglomerate). The company's $19,000,000 annual payroll dominates the economy, 40% of Bogalusa's entire workforce is employed by CZ, and the pervasive stench of its noxious fumes fouls the air. But unlike the old Great Southern days, the company no longer foots the bill for schools, hospitals, and other public services — taxpayers get to do that. While City Hall is nominally independent, politicians and public bureaucrats clearly understand that CZ still calls the tune — 70% of city taxes come from CZ, two of the City Council's five members work for CZ, and other CZ employees serve on the school board and other civic bodies.
Economically and culturally, Washington Parish (county) is similar to adjacent Pike County Mississippi (McComb), and the Pearl River region on both sides of the state border is often referred to as "Klan nation."
According to the 1960 Census, Blacks make up more than a third of the 44,000 people who live in Washington Parish and some 35-40% of Bogalusa's 23,000 inhabitants are Black. The town is thoroughly segregated — neighborhoods, schools, parks, restrooms, lunch counters, and, of course, jobs. There are no Black cops, firemen, or public officials. In the CZ plants there are "white" jobs and "Colored" jobs. Blacks cannot be hired or promoted into "white" jobs, and whites will not demean themselves by doing "Colored" work. The facilities in CZ plants are segregated, toilets, time clocks, lockers, even the pay-windows. Blacks are served food in the cafeteria, but only after whites, and then they have to eat the food in a separate wooden shack. While CZ will only contract with whites to cut the timber that forms the raw material for their plants, the actual cutting and hauling labor is done by Black subcontractors who pay a commission on each load to the white man who holds the prime contract with CZ.
Back in the 1950s, the NAACP managed to register a number of Black voters in Washington Parish. When a state injunction drove the NAACP underground in 1956, activists formed the Bogalusa Voters & Civic League (BVCL). In 1959, the White Citizens Council orchestrated a purge that removed 85% of Black voters from the Washington Parish rolls, but a court ruled the purge unconstitutional in both purpose and effect. By 1964, most parish whites are registered, as are roughly 20% of Blacks. This means that Blacks comprise a bit under 10% of the total electorate — not enough to elect any Blacks to office, but enough to swing a tight election between two white candidates and give the BVCL at least a little negotiating power with the mayor and city council.
The rising tide of Freedom Movement activity in the early 1960s inspires Black workers to begin challenging job discrimination and segregation in the CZ plants. Reed Hunt, Chairman of Crown-Zellerbach, responds that the company has no inclination to "alter the accepted pattern of race relations in the community." But under pressure, particularly from CORE in San Francisco where CZ has its corporate headquarters, the company is forced to make a few cosmetic steps towards equality. In 1963 they end segregation in the company cafeteria, allowing Blacks to actually eat in the same room with whites. White workers are furious. They boycott the facility and force it to close. When the shower-room is integrated, whites refuse to take showers.
During this period in the early '60s, CZ carries out a mechanization program in its Bogalusa plants. Hundreds of white and Black workers are laid off. A joint seven-month strike by both the white and Black union locals is unable to halt the lay-offs. By 1964, some 500 jobs have been eliminated and the workforce cut to 2900 (2500 white, 400 Black). Membership in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan increases, as does their influence with the white population. When news reports announce that President Kennedy has been assassinated in Dallas, white patrons in the local bank burst into spontaneous applause.
In January, 1964, the KKK stages multiple cross burnings around the parish. On May 30, some 800 Klansmen, half in white hoods and robes, stage a Klan rally in Bogalusa. The wearing of hoods to conceal identity violates both Bogalusa's anti-masking ordinance and Louisiana's anti-Klan laws, but city officials make no effort to enforce those laws or halt the "Klonklave." Uniformed police (some of whom are Klansmen themselves) work with the Klan marshals to facilitate the event. In an article for The Nation magazine, author Paul Good later refers to Bogalusa as "Klantown USA."
Crown-Zellerbach and moderate civic leaders know they are sitting on a racial power-keg. In an attempt to head off a social explosion, Bogalusa mayor Jesse Cutrer forms a 21 member biracial committee that includes some of the old-guard Black leaders from the BVCL.
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) has been active in nearby East
and West Feliciana parishes since 1963. In the Spring of 1964 they
send a small team of organizers to meet with Black leaders in Bogalusa
about expanding CORE activities into Washington Parish. The BVCL
leaders ask them to hold off and give the biracial committee a chance.
They believe they can use the threat of CORE protests to extract
concessions from the white power-structure. CORE organizer
Mimi Feingold reports to CORE
headquarters: "White people here are really afraid of CORE and
demonstrations. They'll do almost anything to keep CORE out."
[1]
CORE honors the local leaders' request. They agree to delay activity in Bogalusa until the end of 1964. But the BVCL strategy fails. Moderate civic leaders and Crown-Zellerbach are more afraid of the Ku Klux Klan than they are of CORE. The Klan rally in May reveals a membership of at least 800. By some estimates more than 100 CZ employees are in the Klan, as are many business owners, police officers and firemen. Robert Rester, the City Attorney, is the Exalted Cyclops of the local Klavern which also includes a number of other city and parish officials. Klan harassment and threats drive a white family suspected of socializing with Blacks from town, a white Tulane student who participated in the New Orleans sit-ins is brutally assaulted, a white CZ worker is kidnapped and whipped with leather belts for the "crime" of playing folk music with Blacks in his private home. When the Bogalusa Daily News editorializes against the Klan, crosses are burned in front of the editor's home and office. The editor, Lou Major, begins carrying a pistol because of death threats. Terrified of KKK violence and economic boycotts, business owners are unwilling to end segregation as required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At the end of 1964, Bogalusa is still as segregated as it was in the 1950s.
As 1964 ends, a small committee of racial moderates seek assistance
from the Federal Community Relations Service (CRS) which was
established by the Civil Rights Act to help communities ease racial
tensions. They invite former Arkansas Congressman Brooks Hays, now a
CRS official, to address an invitation-only, interracial dinner at a
prominent white church. The Klan mobilizes to stop this
"race-mixing." Racist hate leaflets are distributed threatening the
handful of white moderates who the Klan claims "... [want] your
children to sit by filthy, runny-nosed, ragged, ugly little niggers in
your public schools." Crosses are burned in front of committee
member's homes, their businesses are boycotted, and they are
threatened with death. Warned it will be bombed, the church withdraws
use of its facility. The meeting never occurs.
CORE's moratorium on Bogalusa activity expires at the end 1964. In late January of 1965, two experienced field-secretaries, Bill Yates and Steve Miller, arrive and begin organizing Black youth to test compliance with the Civil Rights Act. Some businesses obey the law and serve them, but many others refuse. Frustrated at the lack of progress and the failure of the "threaten-them-with-CORE" strategy, BVCL members oust the old-guard leadership at a tumultuous meeting in the union hall of the Black local. A.Z. Young, union leader and WWII vet, is elected president. Crown-Zellerbach worker Robert Hicks is chosen vice-president and Gayle Jenkins, a hospital food-service worker, becomes Secretary.
The Ku Klux Klan knows that Yates and Miller are staying at the home of Robert Hicks. On the night of February 1st, they form a lynch gang to get the two white activists. Police Chief Claxton Knight refuses to provide protection: "We have better things to do than protect people who aren't wanted here," he tells them. He warns the two CORE workers to get out of town for their own safety and offers an escort if they agree to permanently leave Bogalusa. Recalling the police role in the Lynching of Chaney, Schwerner, & Goodman they refuse. "We just knew that if Yates and Miller left our house at that moment, we would never see them alive again," Robert Hicks later recalled. He summons help from neighbors, and fifteen armed men arrive to defend against the KKK. The CORE organizers work the phones, activating the national CORE network. Phone calls and telegrams pour in to news bureaus, FBI, Department of Justice, Governor McKeithen and Crown Zellerbach headquarters in San Francisco. The Klan raid is called off.
A day and a half later, on February 3rd, Klansmen in cars chase Yates and Miller as they leave the union hall. Miller manages to reach Andrey's, a Black-owned cafe, but the gang surrounds Yates. They beat and kick him until a group of Black men force them back long enough for Yates to reach the cafe. More and more Klansmen gather outside the cafe, chatting amicably with the cops. When darkness falls, the police withdraw and all the phones in the neighborhood suddenly go dead. Armed Blacks manage to move the two CORE workers to a home that can more easily be defended. Eventually, FBI agents and State Troopers break the siege.
Meanwhile, CORE demonstrators — mostly teenagers — continue to test compliance with the Civil Rights Act and protest segregated facilities. They are heckled and abused by whites, and often physically assaulted by Klansmen who the cops treat as honored civic benefactors. To a degree, the presence of news media and Justice Department observers limits the intensity of the violence, but each protest and sit-in is an ordeal of raw courage for the young girls and boys who defy the Klan day after day in the downtown business district, and their bravery inspires the Black community.
On February 15, the Ku Klux Klan renames itself the "Anti-Communist Christian Association" and obtains a state charter as a nonprofit organization. Behind the protection of this patriotic cover, they sharply escalate their violence. Death threats and White Citizens Council economic warfare drive the few white moderates out of the county or into deep hiding. Club-carrying Klansmen force Blacks out of cafes. They hurl bricks and bottles from speeding cars at Black pedestrians regardless of whether or not they are active with the Movement. Cars driven by Blacks are stopped on the street and the occupants beaten. Blacks are assaulted when they stop for gas or groceries. High-speed chases of CORE organizers in the rural areas of Washington Parish are frequent. The violence becomes so intense in "Klantown USA" that the desegregation testing and protests have to be temporarily halted. Neither the police nor the town's political leadership do anything to halt the escalating violence. CRS head LeRoy Collins reports to Washington: "The Mayor and the police seem to feel that the way to avoid violence and maintain law and order is for the Negro citizens not to seek to exercise their constitutional rights."
CORE organizer Bill Yates asks the Jonesboro Deacons for Defense & Justice for assistance. On February 21, Deacon leaders Ernest Thomas and F.D. Kirkpatrick along with CORE field-secretary Charles Fenton arrive in Bogalusa. They present a strategy of self-defense in cooperation with nonviolent direct action. "It takes violent Blacks to combat these violent whites," Thomas tells them. "It takes nonviolent whites and nonviolent Negroes to sit down and bargain whenever the thing is over — and iron it out."
With the help of the experienced Jonesboro activists, a well-organized Deacons chapter comes together in Bogalusa. Led by Charles Sims, it provides armed guards for the mass meetings at the union hall, escorts for CORE cars on rural roads, riflemen to protect activists and the CORE office at night, and roving security patrols to protect the Black neighborhoods after dark. Though heavily outnumbered and outgunned by both Klan and cops, the Deacons are determined that if blood flows in the street some of it will be the blood of white racists. For all their bravado, Klansmen show little enthusiasm for a stand-up fight with Blacks armed and ready to return fire. Governor McKeithan orders the State Troopers to disarm the Deacons — but not if it means putting their lives at risk, which it will.
In Bogalusa, the national mass media suddenly discover the Deacons as a BIG story. The Deacons become a Rorschach test upon whom the media project white fears and fantasies. Press and TV reports distort and sensationalize Deacon goals and activities, lumping them into their "kill-whitey" scare-stories about the Nation of Islam and violent urban uprisings in the North such as the Harlem Rebellion and Watts uprising. They invent nonexistent controversies between the (bad) "violent tactics" of the Deacons and the (good) nonviolence of CORE, and they enormously exaggerate disagreements between the Deacons and other Freedom Movement organizations and leaders. For security reasons, the Deacons sensibly keep their membership numbers and chapter organizations confidential. But that encourages the press to let their imaginations run wild. By June of 1965, the Los Angeles Times is claiming that there are 15,000 Deacons in 50 chapters across the South, other publications see in the Deacons ominous portents of Black terrorism and guerrilla armies. Completely ignoring the fact that the Deacons risk their lives to protect white activists with groups like CORE, MCHR, and ACLU, some reporters portray them as a "Black racists," or a "Black Ku Klux Klan."
Local, state, and Federal police agencies question and harass Deacon members. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover considers them a "national threat" and they are targeted for "intensified attention" along with CORE, SCLC, SNCC, and the Nation of Islam. FBI field reports on the Deacons total more than 1,500 pages.
On February 21st, CORE resumes testing compliance with the Civil
Rights Act. Not a single establishment is willing to serve Blacks, not
even those that had previously complied during the tests in January.
They are terrified of the KKK. Any business that dares to serve Blacks
becomes a target of a Klan "wrecking crew." CORE staff report:
"Each time a Negro enters an establishment, the manager says
that he can neither serve nor protect them. Then he makes a phone call
and within five minutes a mob comes in and forces them to
leave."
Faced with this violence, the Deacons have to maintain a delicate strategic and tactical balance. To paraphrase McMahon, the "Deacons in being" deter the Klan from lethal violence. But for that deterrence to work, the Deacons have to continue to exist and operate as an organized force. The cops, of course, are eager to bust Deacons on the slightest excuse, and Deacons in jail or tied up in lengthy felony trials can't defend against Klan assassins or lynch mobs. If a Deacon responds with defensive-violence when Klansmen punch and kick a nonviolent protester, it is the Deacon who will be arrested, not the KKK. To remain ready to protect protesters against lethal attack with knives, ax-handles, firebombs, and guns, the Deacons have to hold themselves in check when demonstrators — mostly women and teenagers — are assaulted with less-than-deadly force. Day after day and minute by minute, the Deacons make constant tactical decisions over if, when, and how to intervene. With the possible exception of clueless reporters, everyone on the street — Deacons, demonstrators, cops, Klan — all understand this fluid, intricate social dance of violence and maneuver, provocation and reaction.
During late February and early March, 1965, while most media attention is focused on the historic Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery, testing and protests continue day after day in Bogalusa. As do attacks by Klansmen. But CORE and the young activists are not cowed; they demand that Black salesclerks be hired in the downtown stores and they escalate the struggle by boycotting the white merchants and picketing on Columbia Street.
Led by Wilfred Ussery, San Francisco CORE steps up pressure on Crown-Zellerbach to intervene in Bogalusa where their economic and political clout could be decisive. CZ headquarters are picketed, letters, phone calls, and telegrams flood in demanding that CZ publicly oppose the Klan and support de-segregation. But Chairman Reed Hunt refuses to "promote social reform." Nor will he remove active Klansmen employed by CZ on grounds that "An employee's private life is his own." Even though CZ has dominated local politics for decades, Hunt claims that the company has no responsibility or authority to be involved in "local affairs." CORE field-secretary Bill Yates counters that, "The worst segregated conditions in Bogalusa are inside the plant, and here they have full and complete jurisdiction."
On April 4, student volunteers on spring break from Kansas State University (KSU) arrive in Bogalusa for a voter registration drive in Washington Parish. A couple of days later a gang of more than 50 Klansmen menace the union hall where a registration class is being held. They leave two coffins, one with CORE organizer Bill Yates' name on it. Later, Klan nightriders shoot into Robert Hicks' home. He and the Deacon guards return fire, driving them off. The next morning, KSU students canvassing for voters are chased by four carloads of KKK.
In flagrant violation of the Constitution's First Amendment rights of free speech, the city passes an ordinance on April 7 that limits pickets to no more than two people at a time and defines almost every other Freedom Movement activity involving three or more people as "Disturbing the Peace." On April 8, national CORE leader James Farmer arrives to lead a mass march to City Hall on the following day. Tension is high. The CZ plants close for the day (freeing up Klansmen who might otherwise be working). The downtown area is sealed off by police barricades. Fearing violence, most of the stores and cafes are closed. Some 400 high-school students try to march, but they are forced back by the cops.
Personally committed to Gandhian philosophical nonviolence, Farmer is uncomfortable with the armed guards provided by both the Louisiana State Troopers and the Bogalusa Deacons for Defense. But he accepts and respects the right of local Blacks to determine for themselves how they respond to Klan attack and fight for justice. "CORE is nonviolent," he tells the press, "but we have no right to tell Negroes in Bogalusa or anywhere else that they do not have the right to defend their homes. It is a constitutional right." [3]
On April 9, Farmer leads 500 protesters, mostly Black, a few white, out of the union hall for the two-mile march. More than 100 police try to keep order, but they are unable (or unwilling) to prevent Klansmen from darting in to attack the marchers. Nor do they stop the Klan from assaulting reporters and smashing their cameras. Under heavy attack, the march retreats back to the union hall. Six hours later, after more State Troopers are brought in, the protesters march again. This time they reach City Hall and are able to hold a rally.
All of Bogalusa's doctors, nurses, and dentists are white. Some are willing to treat Blacks (after first treating whites, of course), others are not. None are willing to treat civil rights activists or anyone injured on a protest. The Federally financed Community Medical Center will only see Blacks on Thursdays except in serious emergencies. The Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR), which supplied emergency-medics for Selma and the March to Montgomery, sends health workers to Bogalusa. They accompany protesters under Klan attack and set up a medical aid station in the Black community.
Led by Berkeley CORE, a group of University of California students arrives in Bogalusa over their spring break. When they return to the Bay Area, they are interviewed by radio host Ira Blue who asks them if the police provided protection:
"Protected us? They terrorize us!" They explain to him that the police yell insults and hurl as much obscene language at picketers as the hecklers; they feel free to swing their billy clubs at youthful picketers; and it pleases them to stand by and laugh while rocks, lighted cigarettes, insecticides, and snakes are thrown into the picket lines and marches. An effort was made to get badge numbers of these police officers; however, the effort was frustrated when both State Troopers and City Police began covering their badges with metallic tape to hide the numbers. [4]
With Selma now out of the headlines, the march led by Farmer and the ongoing Klan violence receive renewed attention from the national media and the Federal government bestirs itself into modest action. Vice President Humphrey meets with Governor McKeithan in Baton Rouge, Community Relations Service officials urge negotiations, and the Justice Department threatens to prosecute the owners of segregated establishments under the Civil Rights Act (which they have been violating for nine months since its enactment). With the support of the Governor and Crown-Zellerbach, Mayor Cutrer refuses to negotiate with Young, Hicks, and Jenkins of the BVCL. Instead, he maneuvers to satisfy the feds by negotiating with a hand-picked group of "Black leaders" of his own choosing.
The protests and Klan violence continue during weeks of maneuvers over who the city will negotiate with — the BVCL or "responsible Negro leaders" selected by the power-structure. In one of many attempts to avoid sitting down with the BVCL, Mayor Cutrer claims that "CORE and the voters league are a small group of self-styled leaders who do not represent the Negro community." He devises a survey to determine the "real leaders" of the Black community. In a single day the BVCL collects some 2,000 signatures of Black supporters to decisively block that ploy.
To keep the pressure on, James Farmer leads another mass march to City Hall. Eventually, the Department of Justice (DOJ) gets around to finally filing suit against half a dozen segregated establishments for violation of the Civil Rights Act (the first such enforcement lawsuit in Louisiana). Governor McKeithen appoints a three-member committee of "racial moderates" to help mediate. Anticipating a violent Klan reaction, he dispatches an additional 300 State Troopers to Bogalusa. More than 3,000 whites attend a fiery Klan rally that denounces all attempts to end segregation or negotiate with the BVCL.
In mid-May, after weeks of stalling, Cutrer and the city council finally agree to meet the BVCL in face-to-face negotiations. CORE suspends protests pending the outcome. As the talks get underway, trucks loaded with furious Klansmen slowly circle City Hall. The city agrees to repeal its city segregation ordinances (which are illegal and unenforceable under the Civil Rights Act) and desegregate government buildings and facilities such as parks (which is also required by the Act). They promise to improve city services such as lighting, sewage, and paving in Black neighborhoods and enforce housing health and safety codes. They also promise to hire some Black police officers and "consider" employing Blacks in other city jobs. They refuse to repeal the emergency ordinance that limits the right to picket, but they do say they'll "consider" modifying some other portions of the unconstitutional law. Maybe. Someday.
Mayor Cutrer announces the agreement on May 18. The Klan is enraged.
They distribute "Who Bought Jess Cutrer" flyers calling
for him and other city officials to be tarred and feathered. The
Klan-friendly Chief of Police Claxton Knight and Commissioner of
Public Safety Arnold Spiers are not, of course, included in the Klan's
list of race-traitors. The next day, May 19, BVCL leaders Robert Hicks
and Sam Barnes notify the FBI and police that they plan to lead a
group of Blacks to Cassidy Park, previously "white-only," but now
supposedly desegregated under the agreement. When they arrive at the
park, a gang of whites are loitering nearby, hanging out with a group
of cops. As the Black children approach the playground the white men
attack with clubs and leather belts. Police, deputies, and troopers
order the Blacks to leave the park. A police dog is set on 15-year old
Gregory Hicks, son of BVCL leader Robert Hicks, biting him in the leg.
Sam Barnes is arrested for carrying a pistol. When he is taken to the
parish jail, three Black convicts are forced to beat him.
The next day, May 20, a mob of 500 whites waited for Blacks at Cassidy
Park. When none appear, they attack reporters. The police do nothing.
The city closes all parks, rendering the agreement to integrate them
meaningless. CORE resumes direct-action protests and the Klan
continues to attack them. On Saturday, May 29, CORE sends out waves of
pickets to enforce the merchant boycott. They are opposed and attacked
by hundreds of whites who rove the downtown area assaulting Blacks. On
Sunday, the stores are closed for the sabbath so all is quiet. On
Monday the confrontation between CORE demonstrators and the Klan mob
is renewed. 125 State Troopers and more than 30 police are unable (or
unwilling) to maintain order. A reporter notes: "Crowds of
whites remained on the streets ... until the stores closed." On
June 1, Mayor Cutrer bans all marches.
As described by author Adam Fairclough in Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972:
1964 (June-Dec)
1966
Klansmen had a remarkable facility for blending in the with the
milling white onlookers, darting out to strike demonstrators and then
darting back to the crowded sidewalks. On July 11, for example, an FBI
agent saw forty to fifty young white men moving towards a BVCL march;
when a contingent of state troopers approached they "seemed to melt
into the crowd and the clubs, sticks, and ballbats ... seemed to
disappear." On occasions, troopers were lured away from the marches by
false reports of nearby altercations; "when they ran off to
investigate, members of the Klan ... coming from the opposite
direction would throw punches or flail away with clubs at the
unprotected marchers." [1]
On June 2nd, Sheriffs deputies O'Neal Moore and David "Creed" Rogers, the first two Black deputies ever hired in Washington Parish, are patrolling a rural area a few miles north of Bogalusa. A pickup truck speeds by them. Two white gunmen in the back open fire. Moore is killed instantly. Rogers, on the passenger side, is wounded and permanently injured when the patrol car veers off the road and smashes into a tree. An hour later a police roadblock in Mississippi stops a truck that matches the description given by Rogers. Ray McElveen, a CZ employee, is arrested. He has membership cards for the rabidly-racist National States Rights Party and the White Citizens Council. He is also assumed to be a member of the KKK. He is charged with Moore's murder, but never brought to trial. The murder remains "unsolved" to this day. FBI agents later tell reporters that they believe it was a Klan operation.
Louisiana Attorney-General Jack Gremillion rules that O'Neal's widow is not eligible for state employee survivor benefits because he had not been killed "while engaged in the direct apprehension of a person."
Through June and July the struggle continues in the sweltering streets of Bogalusa. The Klansmen are confident that Bogalusa cops and Washington Parish sheriffs will not arrest them for assaulting CORE protesters. The demonstrators, however, are busted on the slightest excuse. Reports one:
"They handcuffed me with my hands behind my back and took me to the city jail in a city police car, with the Sheriff's car following. When they took me from the car at the jail they started shoving and kicking me. This continued as they brought me into the jail. While I was being booked, in front of the Desk Sargent, I was kicked and knocked down on the floor. The only time they said anything to me was when I had been knocked down. One officer said: "Boy, what you doin' down on the floor. Get up from there!"" [4]
On June 25, the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee (ACLU) files a lawsuit against Police Chief Knight in Federal Court on behalf of BVCL leader Robert Hicks. The suit demands that the Bogalusa cops protect Black protesters from the Klan and white mobs, and stop harassing, beating, and arresting demonstrators exercising their Constitutional right of free speech. Police complicity in the brutal attack at Cassidy Park on May 19 is presented as the case in point.
On July 8, there is another CORE march. Hattie Mae Hill (17) is wounded by a rock that strikes her in the head. Leneva Tiedman, a white nurse working with the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) rushes the bleeding girl to a car driven by two Deacons, Henry Austin and Milton Johnson. Since the public hospital won't treat protesters, they try to get her to the MCHR aid station in the Black community but they are attacked by angry whites. Klansman try to grab the two women in the back seat, they pull Johnson from the car, beating and kicking him. Austin tries to push them back and rescue Johnson, when that fails he fires his pistol in the air. To save Johnson he then shoots one of the white attackers, injuring but not killing him. The police then arrest both Johnson and Austin. The Klansmen, of course, are left free to continue attacking other protesters.
On July 10, Federal Judge Herbert Christenberry rules in Hicks vs Knight. He issues an injunction ordering Bogalusa police and Washington Parish sheriffs to protect Black protesters from mob attack and to halt their own "... violence, harassment, intimidation, verbal abuse, unnecessary force, and unlawful arrest." Furious at the ruling and the shooting of the Klansman, thousands of whites rally to hear J.B. Stoner — Imperial Wizard of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Chairman of the National States Rights Party — tell them "The nigger is not a human being. He is somewhere between the white man and the ape. ... What the nigger really wants is our white women."
The Klan circulates a petition to recall Mayor Cutrer and 3,000 whites sign it, but a legal technicality prevents the recall election from going forward. Cutrer and other city officials know their support among white voters has dropped to almost nothing and with it their ability to control events. They ask Governor McKeithen to send in the National Guard to maintain order. McKeithen refuses, but offers to help broker a deal. He meets twice with Young and Hicks, offering to set up more negotiations with city officials if they agree to suspend protests for a 30-day "cooling off" period. The BVCL refuses to halt direct action in return for vague promises of more talk.
The BVCL and Mayor Cutrer jointly appeal to Washington for Federal help. In mid-July, DOJ official John Doar is sent to investigate. Appalled at the ease with which the KKK roams the streets and assaults CORE demonstrators, he reports that the State Troopers are trying to enforce Judge Christenberry's injunction, but the city police and parish deputies are ignoring it. As described by Fairclough:
On July 16, for example, Doar saw whites attack pickets at the
Pine Tree Plaza shopping center; the next day a barber drenched two
white pickets with a hose and smeared soap on their arms and
shoulders, commenting, "You pickets smell like niggers and need a
bath." During the first incident, the police were conspicuously
absent when the attacks took place; when the finally arrived on the
scene they arrested two of the beaten pickets. During the second
incident, policemen stood by laughing."
Doar convinces the Justice Department to make Bogalusa a test case for enforcing the Civil Rights Act. The DOJ intervenes in the Hicks case seeking criminal and civil contempt against Police Chief Knight and Commissioner of Public Safety Arnold Spiers. They file a lawsuit to enjoin the KKK and 35 named Klansmen from violence. Another Federal lawsuit seeks to desegregate several restaurants, and brutality charges are brought against the parish K9 squad for the beating of Sam Barnes in the parish jail. Pressured by Attorney General Katzenbach and President Johnson, Hoover sends in a swarm of over 100 FBI agents to monitor compliance with court rulings and target the Klan. On July 30, Judge Christenberry finds Knight and Spiers guilty of civil contempt. He orders them to comply with his previous order and cooperate with the DOJ or face jail and daily fines of $100.
With the cops enjoined from aiding and abetting them, and now facing some actual risk of fines or jail for violence, the white mobs evaporate from the streets of Bogalusa.
"Overnight, Washington crushed the white supremacist coup in Bogalusa and forced local authorities to uphold the law. In retrospect, what is remarkable was how little was required to destroy the Klan and force local authorities to protect citizens' rights and liberties. The Federal government did nothing more than threaten city officials with modest fines and light jail sentences." — Robert Hicks. [2]
But though the white mobs and overt, public, Klan violence is largely (though not entirely) suppressed, the struggle for justice and equality in Bogalusa Louisiana is just beginning.
See Bogalusa to Baton Rouge march for continuation of the Bogalusa movement.
Klan terror is based on ambush, mob violence, and attacks on those who cannot fight back. But despite their posturing and fiery rhetoric, few Klansmen are willing to risk their own skins when their victims are armed, organized, and willing to return fire. Once the Deacons establish themselves, Klan caravans and night-riders no longer raid the Black community and cross-burnings in Black neighborhoods dwindle away. Nor are Klansmen willing to face serious jail time. So long as local law enforcement gives them effective immunity from arrest and prosecution they are eager to brutalize nonviolent protesters. So long as they are confident that local white juries won't convict them if they're caught, they feel free to bushwhack Blacks. But when the Federal government finally musters the courage to risk political fallout and confront both the Klan and local cops, overt Klan violence is driven underground and largely suppressed. Washington politicians and media pundits proclaim this as a great moral victory, but looking back over bloody years — generations, in fact — Freedom Movement activists bitterly count the cost and know that the Feds could have stopped Klan violence and lynch-law any time they wanted to had they valued Black lives as highly as white votes.
See Bogalusa to Baton Rouge march for continuation.
For more information on the Bogalusa Civil Rights Movement:
Books: Louisiana, Bogalusa, & New Orleans
Web:
Bogalusa LA Movement
Deacons for Defense
Louisiana Movement
Documents: CORE ~ Louisiana in Brief
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Documents: Mississippi Freedom Labor Union
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Web: Malcolm X
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Web: Lowndes County Freedom Organization
Documents: Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) Political Education Primer
Personal stories from Lowndes County:
Jimmy Rogers
Ruby Sales
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Web: Martyrs of the Movement
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Books: Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Web links:
SCOPE Summer Project
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Documents: The New Virginia
Personal stories from the SCOPE project:
Maria Gitin Letter From Movement Boot Camp
Bruce Hartford
Southern Courier Founded (July 65-Dec 68)
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Articles:
Reporters and Reformers Robert Norrell, Master's thesis, University of Virginia, 1978.
"Reporters and Reformers: Story of Southern Courier," South Atlantic Quarterly, (Winter 1980)
Web:Southern Courier
Documents: Southern Courier Example Issues
(Description to be written.)
See Integrating Americus High School for preceding events.
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Books: Georgia Movement — Atlanta — Albany
Web: Albany, Americus, & SW Georgia Movements.
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Books: Civil Rights Legislation
Web: Voting Rights Act — 1965
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Book: Outside Agitator: Jon Daniels and the Civil Rights Movement in
Alabama.
Web links:
Assasination of Jonathan Daniels for web links.
Martyrs of the Movement
Personal memory: Ruby Sales
(Description to be written.)
(Description to be written.)
See ASCS Elections — A Struggle for Economic Survival for preceding events.
Over time, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act eventually begin to bring overt, legally-sanctioned, segregation and denial of political voting rights to an end. But by 1965 it is becoming clear that those profound changes to the "southern way of life" are having little effect on exploitation and economic injustice. Across the South, Freedom Movement activists look for effective ways to address the massive poverty that is ultimately rooted in the enormous inequalities of political and economic power between white and Black, rich and poor. Efforts to create new kinds of labor unions, welfare rights groups, War on Poverty programs, and farm, commercial, employment, housing, and purchasing co-ops are all undertaken.
The Agriculture Stabilization & Conservation Service (ASCS) is the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) agency that determines which farmers get Federal crop allotments, low-interest loans, cash subsidies, and other benefits. The local ASCS county committees that make the actual decisions are still all-white, and their division of benefits between white and Black, and rich and poor, remains profoundly unfair. So in many southern states, Movement activists organize campaigns to elect Blacks to those committees.
Meanwhile, the cumulative effect of mass protest and national response is beginning to significantly alter the social and political context within which the white-power-structure maneuvers to maintain white-supremacy and economic exploitation. In the place of traditional, southern-style, open, brutal, in-your-face, racism they now begin to slowly shift towards northern-style covert strategies of disguise, deception, and tokenism.
From Washington, the USDA orders that all ASCS elections now be conducted by mail — ostensibly to prevent polling- place intimidation. But a mail-in vote means that no one can see who is casting ballots, which makes it easier for local ASCS staff to allow ineligible whites to vote. Nor is there any way in a mail election to ensure that the ballot box isn't stuffed with phony votes before the public count, nor that all the ballots cast by Blacks reach the box. The USDA also announces that as a supposed civil rights measure the number of Black candidates on each ballot must be equal to the percentage of Black farmers in that county. This sounds good, but what it actually does is allow the all-white county committees to nominate their own set of Black candidates — often without even bothering to inform or ask the Black "candidate." These phony candidates split and dilute the Black vote. There is no corresponding requirement on the number of white candidates, so with a single white candidate for each position, the white vote remains concentrated as a bloc.
Of course, old habits do die hard. Implementation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires government agencies such as the USDA to establish and carry out desegregation plans. NAACP attorney J. Francis Pohlhaus challenges the Alabama state ASCS over their exclusion of Blacks from the meetings to formulate and adopt the state desegregation plan. He demands to know how they, "could approve plans to implement Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, when the plans are drafted in violation of Title VI." Assistant Secretary Joseph M. Robertson replies from Washington, "In all candidness, the answer to your question, as to whether in fact the Alabama State Plan to achieve compliance under Title VI was drawn up at a racially exclusive meeting, is yes."
In 1965, the White Citizens Council campaign to force Black land-owners off the land continues unabated. And white planters are rapidly dispossessing their Black tenant farmers. Freedom Movement activists know they are in a race — a race to elect Blacks to ASCS county committee and obtain a fair share of Federal farm benefits before the white power-structure's economic warfare so reduces the number of Black farmers that they can never win an ASCS election.
In Sumter County Alabama, for example, Black tenants on several large plantations join the SCLC-affiliated Sumter County Movement for Human Rights and then sue the plantation owners for their fair share of the cotton subsidies that the ASCS county committee had granted exclusively to the owners. When they win the lawsuit they are summarily evicted — almost 100 families — and the planters switch from cotton to timber farming. Few of the dispossessed tenants receive any of the settlement money because the planters claim it's all owed to the company-store, and since they keep all the books and never provide any receipts or accounting to the tenants, no one can say them nay. Most of the evicted sharecroppers leave Sumter County in desperate search of a livelihood elsewhere, but 40 families stay. They form a co-op, the Panola Land Buying Association, to collectively acquire land of their own. After many years of struggle and hardship, they eventually succeed.
In Louisiana, CORE organizes Black farmers in nine Black-majority parishes to vote in and run candidates for ASCS county committees. So too, does the MFDP in many of the counties of the Delta. SNCC does the same in a number of Alabama Black-Belt counties, as do Freedom Movement activists in Southwest Georgia.
But everywhere the pattern set in Mississippi the previous year is repeated, Black farmers who run for ASCS office or vote in an ASCS election face harsh retaliation. Ineligible whites are allowed to cast phony ballots, and the ASCS staff in charge of the election stack the deck against Blacks however they can. So the 1965 results are no different from those in 1964. While some Blacks manage to win places on a community committee their numbers are too small and too scattered to elect anyone to a county committee where the real decisions that affect farmers lives are made.
The experience in Alabama is typical. SNCC focuses its efforts on Black-Belt counties such as Barbour, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Lowndes, and Wilcox. In July, more than 25 SNCC field organizers and volunteers begin educating and organizing Black farmers (both land-owners and tenants) around the ASCS elections scheduled for fall. They canvas for eligible voters, recruit candidates, and obtain nominating signatures.
Working out of the Selma office, Elmo Holder coordinates research and development of education materials. Because the official ASCS literature is so confusing and vague, he asks Alabama ASCS Director B.L. Collins to clarify exactly who is eligible to vote, how that is determined, how "tenant farmer" and "share-cropper" are defined, and if farm wives can vote. Clarity is not forthcoming. With the vote being conducted by mail, Holder asks Collins how the ballots will be secured and he reports back that: "[Collins] was at a loss to know how to prevent tampering with the ballots."
In September, Black farmers and SNCC organizers from Black-Belt counties meet at St. Paul's Methodist church in Selma to discuss the ASCS elections. Civil rights lawyers along with Jac Wasserman and James Mays of the National Sharecroppers Fund explain ASCS programs and election procedures. One SNCC worker concludes: "Whether win, lose, or draw, the important thing is that folks are really interested in the elections and see ways of attempting to get their own people elected."
But it's tough going. SNCC worker Janet Jemott in Lowndes County meets people who have never even heard of the ASCS committee: "All they see is Mr. Charlie who comes around and takes their cotton away." According to the USDA rules, it takes six signatures to nominate a candidate. Organizers submit petitions with 10 or 12 signatures just to be safe. But in Greene County, ASCS officers disqualify 11 candidates for "insufficient number of signatures." The same thing happens in adjacent Hale County. The rejected candidates have until October 28 to file an appeal, but the ASCS staff don't tell them they've been disqualified until October 27, and then they close the office at noon the next day to prevent anyone from appealing. Meanwhile, tenant families who signed nominating petitions are thrown off their land, and the same thing happens in adjacent Hale County.
In Lowndes County — the center of SNCC organizing in Alabama — they manage to get Black candidates on the ballot for 24 of the 30 community committee positions. The all-white county committee then nominates Black candidates of their own to flood the ballot — in some cases without bothering to inform designated "candidates." In one community, 68 Blacks and 3 whites end up running for the 3 open positions. The ASCS offices also sends out a number of ballots for the wrong community to Black farmers who are then chased out of the office when they try to obtain the correct ones. Their votes end up not counted, enough to have made a difference in some close races.
In Wilcox, where 36 Black candidates are nominated for 40 open positions, the ASCS staff comes up with a different strategy — they invent some new rules. As everywhere else, voters must mark their ballot for the candidates of their choice, and then they have to draw a line through the names of all the candidates they don't want to vote for. Father John Golden, a civil rights worker in Wilcox, reports that after a lifetime of terror and intimidation, "Many blacks said they could not draw a line through a white man's name." The instructions are confusing, and the ASCS officials throw out Black ballots that (in their opinion) don't do everything precisely right.
When SNCC workers protest, Ray Fitzgerald, a USDA Deputy Director from Washington, assures them that a (white) state official will monitor the vote counting in each county. That assurance provides scant comfort. In one Wilcox community, for example, there are five white and two Black candidates for three positions; when the 120 ballots are counted every vote goes to three of the five white candidates — the other two whites and the two Black candidates don't get a single vote, even though Blacks testify that they voted for the Black candidates.
The Alabama ASCS election votes are counted on November 15. As in other states, a few Blacks manage to get elected to a community committee, but not enough to put a Black on the all-powerful county committee.
See Alabama ASCS Elections, 1966 — The Struggle Continues for continuation.
For more information on ASCS election struggles:
CRMVets: Agriculture Stabilization & Conservation Service (ASCS) Elections (Documents)
Web: Agriculture Stabilization & Conservation Service (ASCS) Elections (Links)
(Description to be written.)
(Description to be written.)
(Description to be written.)
Freedom Movement activists hold a wide range of views on LBJ's War on Poverty program. Some see it as a sincere effort to alleviate poverty — so long as that can be done without significantly altering the existing relations of power between rich and poor, Black and white. Which cannot be done. The less charitably inclined view it as a conscious and deliberate effort to weaken and sap Movement militancy by paying off leaders and diverting activists from street protests into economically- dependant non-profit organizations. A strategy that over the following years proves to be quite effective.
(Detailed description to be written)
1. Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972
2. "By Any Means Necessary" Mike Marqusee, Nation magazine, July 5, 2004
3. Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era
4. Bogalusa: Negro Community vs. Crown Colony (Calisphere ~ U.C. Berkeley)
5. Dr. King, the Farmers Will Tell You..., Don Jelinek
|
|
Copyright © 2004-2008
Webspinner: webmaster@crmvet.org
(Labor donated)