Provided courtesy of Freedom Summer Digital Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society
[Background: From its founding in the early 1900s to the time of this interview, Bogalusa, Louisiana, was a "company town." Roughly 40% of the working population were employed producing paper and chemical products for Crown Zellerbach (CZ), a corporate giant headquartered in San Francisco CA. The company provided more than two-thirds of all municipal taxes, they politically controlled city government, and the police cooperated closely with the CZ security force. Located in the Pearl River region of Southwest Mississippi and Eastern Louisiana — an area often referred to as "Klan Nation" — Bogalousa was known as "Klantown U.S.A."]
Mimi Feingold:
An interview with Gayle Jenkins, secretary of the Bogalusa Voters League. Gayle, could you just tell me a little bit about how the movement got started in Bogalusa, and how you got involved with the Bogalusa Voters League?
Gayle Jenkins:
Yes, I will. I'm Gayle Jenkins, Secretary of Bogalusa Voters League. In 1965, they had the organization, which was about 10 years old, I guess, and they had a president with the name Andrew Moses. CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] wrote a letter [in 1964] to the mayor of Bogalusa saying that they would come in after the civil rights bill.[The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited de jure, legally-enforced segregation. CORE's letter warned that once the bill passed they would test compliance with the new law. It was understood that CORE would mount protests if segregation was maintained in violation of the new law.]The mayor picked Andrew Moses, Pedro Monday, Elsie Dawson and three other men, and sent them to Plaquemine to ask CORE not to come in Bogalusa, which he paid them a hundred dollars. And it leaked out in the Negro community. The night that they was going to have [BCVL] meetings at the union hall, well, that was the largest meeting I've ever seen in Bogalusa. And the Negroes met, and they confronted him with a proposition that the man had made with them. So finally, they admitted that they had gone down and asked CORE not to come in, but they wouldn't make the same mistake again.
So they reorganized, they got new officers that night, and I was nominated for secretary of Bogalusa Voters League. Then we went on with our regular meeting, which was as an organization to start to try to stimulate those [voter] registrations.
Later, [some] white citizens of Bogalusa invited a man in named Brook Hayes, and the Klansman wouldn't let Brook Hayes come into Bogalusa to speak.
[Former congresmann Brooks Hayes was an official with the Federal Community Relations Service (CRS) which had been established by the Civil Rights Act to help communities ease racial tensions. White moderates in Bogalusa asked him speak to an invitation-only interracial dinner to be held at a prominant white church. The KKK mobilized against such "race mixing." Crosses were burned and white moderates were threatened with being fired or an economic boycott against their businesses. Some were threatened with violence and death. After being warned it would be bombed, the church withdrew its support. The interracial meeting was cancelled and the white moderates were cowed into silence.]People all over the nation sent a telegram to Crown in San Francisco about this incident with Brook Hayes here. Crown sent a letter to the mayor, and told them to integrate Bogalusa, and integrate it peacefully. He sent for the Negro League, and we had a meeting with them, and he said the time was right. And we went back to New Orleans and got CORE. We made a deal with CORE that they would come in on Monday, Wednesdays, and Friday [to test compliance with the Civil Rights Act], and just when we come back, we met with the city council and told them what had been accomplished.
They decided we only needed one day [for compliance testing], and that would be Thursday [in January 1965]. But Robert Taylor asked, why would we need all this protection? They was getting state troopers in to follow people. So he said you'd have to have a national organization so you get the television to come in. Thursday the school kid was out, and you went to any place you wanted to without any incident [meaning that some lunch counters and other facilities served Blacks].
CORE left that night, and the next day, when you went back to test these same places, all hell broke loose. And from then on, we've been having a lot of trouble in Bogalusa, and the governor of this state, he painted the pretty picture of Louisiana, a nice image, but the real picture never gets out to the people for them to know what's actually going on in Bogalusa.
We had a Negro [deputy] sheriff, and he was killed and nothing was done about it. We had Captain {UNCLEAR}, who was coming through on his way to Vietnam. He was shot and nothing was done about it. And then today we have a Negro man that was killed, and he was found in the white area on Louisiana avenue, by Mr. Theo's car, and nothing has been done about it, and I don't know if there will be anything. But it's a hard struggle and a long fight, and I guess if we keep the faith, we will overcome one day.
Feingold:
Could you tell us a little bit about some of the incidents last summer, some of the marching?
Jenkins:
Oh, last summer [1965] was the hardest summer that I've ever had in my life, and I don't think I can go through a summer like that again. We had people from everywhere to come in and try to help us in this struggle here. We met at the union hall, and it was the house on the corner from the union hall that the Klansman bought. And they put a casket out, and they were burning [an effigy of] James Farmer in this casket. The white workers that was in home, those people were intimidated. Houses was set on fire. Robert Hicks's home was shot into about six times.
Jenkins:
The police officers went to Robert Hicks's house and asked him to put some white [CORE activists] out, and he refused. They told him if he didn't his house would be bombed at night. So, that night his daughter called me, and we called mens from all around in the neighborhood, and they went there with their guns. And they sat there and watched the house, but later on it still was shot in. And right now Robert Hicks's has to be watched.
Feingold:
Could you say a little bit more about who the Deacons are, and what they attempt to do?
Jenkins:
I think that's how the Deacons for Defense & Justice was organized, by having to sit up at night and watch people houses. And if it had not been for the Deacon's, Bogalusa probably would have been destroyed. I won't call out Deacon's names, because I don't like to.
Feingold:
Oh, no. I don't mean that you should call their names, just tell us a little bit about what the organization is all about.
Jenkins:
Okay. I can tell you who the president of the Deacons is, the President is {UNCLEAR}. And their membership, they don't give out how many deacons that they do have, but it's a group that formed to retaliate when something happened against the Negroes. I think it's a wonderful group, because they patrol the area. They protect people that come in and out. And I really think it's a fine group, but they just don't like for too much publicity to be on them.
Feingold:
Yeah, you mentioned before some trouble with the Crown Zellerbach company, and could you tell me a little bit about that?
Jenkins:
Yes. I think Crown is the root of all of it. If Crown would comply, then we wouldn't have any trouble in Bogalusa. Just like they told the mayor to integrate, and they integrated peacefully for the first date, they could do it now, but Crown would not comply with anything. When the bill was passed July the second that a big firm with over 50 employees would have to hire Negroes, they called one Negro who we call conservative Negroes, who are not in the movement, and hired her as secretary for the firm, with the understanding that she would go back to her job as teaching when September comes.[Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited overt employment discrimination by businesses with more than 50 employees.]And we have gone to Crown to try to get jobs in the bag plant where it's just common labor, but they will not hiring the Negro womens. They have about 300 white women. They make a hundred and some dollars a month [roughly equal to $1,000/month in 2021], and they pay us $15 a week [roughly equal to $500/month] to wash, iron and tend to their children and keep the house.
They also have men there at Crown who'd been working for 25 and 30 years, and they on a standstill. This line of progression, they call it, and they have two lines of progression, one is for the white and one is for the Negroes, and the Negroes can't advance.
[The CZ plants in Bogalusa had been unionized in the 1930s. As required by Louisiana law, there were two segregated union locals, one for whites and one for Blacks. The union contract specified that promotions into less onerous and better-paid jobs be done by seniority. The senority lists were segregated, one for whites and one for Blacks. The better job slots were only open to those on the white seniority list, the jobs on the Black list were the most dangerous and lowest-paid. The BCVL and CORE were demanding a single, integrated list that would eliminate the system of "white" and "Colored" jobs.]The farthest they can go is... They can't even be an overall truck driver. So if Crown would really comply, I think the local people would comply, but as long as Crown holds its stand, the merchants in town feel like that they can follow up this big company. And right now Robert Hicks [of the BCVL] has gone into court with Crown about this line of progression. I don't know what the outcome will be.
Jenkins:
Oh, I'd like to tell you about all the schools too. Last year, we integrated the schools. We had the token of integration, and we had four, four children in the 12th grade; one girl, she was 16 years old, and three boys. We have two little children in the first grade. Those kids were intimidated the nine months that they were there. They never made any friends, and the white kids didn't even speak to them in those nine months. But the boys were beaten, they were kicked, they was spit on. That food was served and they would have worms on their plate, and all this was reported to the federal people. And the administrators of the school told us to keep it quiet, but those kids graduated. Now this year we have 69 kids registered to go to white schools. I don't know what the outcome will be.
Feingold:
Have you been getting any protection, or much protection at all, from the federal government?
Jenkins:
No, I don't feel we get too much protection from the federal government. Mostly what they do is take notes. You have the FBI agents in here, and they take notes and they say that's all they can do. For instance, last summer the park was integrated. We have a park here, and only whites was using it, so we decided that we would integrate this park, because everybody's tax pays for it. And the women and children were in the park, and the KU Klux Klan come out, and the police helped the Klansmen to beat children and women in this park, and the federal people was there, and they only took notes. They said that was all they could do. There's another incident.And I asked them about the case where his deputy sheriff was killed, and they can't convene. They say it's not a federal crime. So really I would like to know what a crime is. A man wearing a badge, and he fell on duty, shot by Ku Klux Klan, and I'm sure that they have all the information about these things. So, I don't know what you would do to get protection from the federal government.
Then we had an incident in the shopping center where there were white [activists] and Negroes picketing. And they [segregationists] beat the kids. They took fire hoses and shot water on them, and they beat people {UNCLEAR}. They [white segregationists] made out affidavits for [protesters] arrest, and didn't even know who it was, and they just picked 'em up and arrest him. And you had federal men standing by. And John Doerr came down, and he happened to be in Bogalusa one day when this same incident happened, but he did carry him into court.
But they can't stop it. Even if somebody is killing you, they can't stop, they can only take a note. And we went to federal court and now we have the Klan under an injunction and the police is under an injunction, the sheriff department. But they do all that dirty work at night, just like the incident that happened today.
Feingold:
Could you tell me a little bit about voter registration?
Jenkins:
Yes. We have a voter's registration drive on, and we've been having that drive on. But we don't have any funds, so we do the best we can with it. And you have to go to Franklinton [the county seat] ;to register. So we had a March to Franklinton too, to try to stimulate the voters' registration drive.
Feingold:
How many people were on the march?
Jenkins:
We had 365 that marched, but when we got to the courthouse it was about 500 people there. Now that voters' registrar comes to Bogalusa one day a week, and that's on a Tuesday. But what he's doing, we have illiteracy in the Negro race. In all races, I guess, but mostly in ours. And these people go, and they didn't understand the word "affiliate." And he would ask him what party they was affiliated with, and they didn't know, and he'd put them all in non-parties and we have quite a few in the Republican party. Now we're having a time trying to get these cards changed, and we have asked for a federal registrar, but they haven't sent one in as yet.
Feingold:
Why is it bad for Negroes not to have party affiliation?
Jenkins:
Well, they won't be able to vote in the election, and if you're Republican, you can't vote in the primary. And mostly all Negroes in the south are Democrats, because we have elections only with the Democrats. We never have Republicans running here against Democrats, so it wouldn't be wise to be in any other party.[At that time, Louisiana was part of the "solid South" where Democrats won every election. So winning the Democratic primary meant automatic victory in the general election. But only recognized members of the Democratic Party could run for office or vote in that party's primary, so registering Afro-Americans as "non-party" affiliated meant they were barred from the elections that really mattered.]
Feingold:
Have any Negroes tried to run for office here yet?
Jenkins:
No. No one has run for office, because we didn't know how you go about it. All of this is new to us, but we have an election coming up in '67, and we will run somebody in the election that's coming up.
Feingold:
Do you see any signs of progress over the years since you first started back in 1965? I mean, do you see, for instance that, that the police treat you with more respect?
Jenkins:
Yeah. I don't know whether it's from the movement or the injunction that they're under, because they violated that injunction on October the 20th. We call that bloody October the 20th, because they beat up so many Negroes on Fourth Street, and they were under this injunction then. They went back to court with Judge Christian Barrett. Now, if they go back in court again, they would be given a jail sentence, so that is the reason that they're giving you a little more respect than you got in the previous years.[In July 1965, BCVL and CORE won a lawsuit against law enforcement in Bogalusa. The result was an injunction requiring cops and sheriffs to halt their brutality and repression against nonviolent protesters. It also required that they protect Black residents from the Klan.]
Feingold:
Has this summer been as rough as last summer? Has there been as much activity?
Jenkins:
No, we haven't had as much activity as we had last summer, but this summer is kind of rough. It's hot, because we've been running all day long, and I still don't know what the outcome would be. It looks to me like it's going to get hotter than it was last summer.
Feingold:
I noticed today as I was driving around town that there's a new office opened up for the Muslims, and I wondered what you thought about that, and if you think that there are going to be very many people who would be interested in joining up.
Jenkins:
Well, I don't know. I saw the office too. They put it up while we was out of town, and I haven't heard too many people talking about it. But the police mentioned it to me. Now, I don't condemn the Muslim, because I don't know all what they're doing, but I'm definitely not going to join them because we have an organization of our own, and there's not enough of us to carry it out.
Feingold:
Yeah, I wondered whether people would join the Muslims rather than the Deacons. In other words, it seemed to me that that the Deacons might appeal to the same thing that the Muslims might appeal to so that the Muslims might not get very many members.
Jenkins:
Well, I don't think they will, because the Deacons is a strong organization. Not only here in Bogalusa, it's organized in all over the world. And I think it would be foolish for them to stop and go with the Muslim, with the ground that they're holding now, because the deacons are really wonderful.
Feingold:
Can we go back for a minute to the early history of the Bogalusa voters league, before CORE came in and while Andrew Moses was still president? What kinds of things did the voters league accomplish, or did it accomplish anything?
Jenkins:
No, it didn't accomplish anything when Andrew was president. You had a few Negroes that was conservative, and the white men always call him in when he wanted to give him a little offering. And that's the difference in it now. Because the people in the Bogalusa Voters League now, they're called rabble rousers, and they liked to stir up trouble.But it's not that we are stirring up trouble, we just want what's rightfully ours. We're not asking anybody to give us anything, but we would like to have what's ours, and that's all. And we don't want to break the law to get it. We would like to stay within the law, and we wished it was some way that when these laws are passed in Congress, that they would enforce them without us getting out in the streets to enforce them, because so many people lose from it. For instance, I had to leave my job. It was but $35 a week, but I must've needed $35, or I wouldn't have been working.
Feingold:
What were you doing?
Jenkins:
I was working at a hospital, and I planed the meals, I bought the food, I prepared three meals a day, served them, and washed the dishes. And a lot of Negroes, they foreclose on you. You have to pay your bills off, once you're involved in the movement. And at one time it was the good old negro, and now you're just bigitting or something. They think you're doing everything wrong, but we know that we are right.
Feingold:
Were you always bigitting all your life?
Jenkins:
No, they didn't say I was, but I'm the same person I was then. Because they always said that Negro women's were sloven, and I couldn't see how. If people would really look at it, I went to work for seven o'clock in the morning, and worked 'til three in the afternoon at this hospital, left the hospital and went to her house at four o'clock, and would come home at 10 or 11 at night. So when would I have time to do anything for my children?And that's what I tell them about all the Negro women, is they go to work for $16 a week [equal to $130/week in 2021], cook, wash and iron, and take care of the white ladies' children, and you just don't feel like it when you get back home. So I wouldn't say that they were lazy, I would say they're just tired. And that's the way it is with everything, we're just tired now. And I'm hoping that something will happen before the people in Bogalusa retaliate, and actually, I think Bogalusa now it's just sitting on a keg.
Feingold:
As sort of a case study of how you all have been dealing with incidents as they come up, could you tell me what you did today from the time that you first heard about the murder of the negro man?
Jenkins:
Oh, this morning, my phone started ringing about 6:30, everybody was calling. It was rumors that a Negro soldier had been killed. So I got up and I called {UNCLEAR} Hicks, who's the wife of Robert Hicks, who's vice-president of the Bogalusa Voters' League. And she came over, and the phone was constantly ringing.So then we got in the car. No, I called the police first, and I asked him if a Negro soldier was killed. And he asked me, "What?" And I repeated it again, and he told me that he couldn't give out that kind of information. So we got in the car, and we went on Louisiana avenue, which is in the white section where the Negro was found, and we found about 10 police cars there and the area was roped off. It was two cars there that had looked like he'd been involved in an accident.
One was a pea green sport model Chevrolet, the other one was a white Bonneville. The first thing I did was took the license number of each car. We come back then to try to find out where the body was at, but nobody knew anything about it. So we continued to ride, and we went to the Charity hospital, and we didn't see the body there.
I called a Deacon and the president of the Deacons, Ryan Bruce. And he got up, and he started riding to try to find out what had happened. And he went to the scene where the murdered man was found, and he asked Sergeant Wascom, who's the police, if he could speak to him. And he told him no, and he was under arrest, and he put him in jail and said he was interfering with the officer trying to perform his duty, and his bond was a hundred dollars cash [equal to $800 in 2021].
We left there, then we made another round, and we come by the hospital. The police was at the hospital, and they had the dead man in the morgue, but they wouldn't give out any information on him. So we stood there. Oh, and the door was open. They had about six white mans in the morgue with him. And I saw him when they pulled his trousers off. He had on the navy blue trousers, and he was bloody from his neck all down in his chest, and he had been beaten. But I didn't know he was shot then, but later on we found out that he had been shot in the back of his head. I left that. The police came to me, and he asked me how I was doing, and I told him. And he told me that he would have to put up a screen, because it was a man and he didn't want us to look.
So I left there, and I went and found some Deacons to come back to see if they could find out anything, but they screened the place off, and we couldn't get near. We went back to where he was found, I don't know whether he was killed there or not, and they had removed these cars, and where they carried the cars to I still don't know. So we come back by the hospital, and somehow it leaked out that the boy's name was Clarence Triggs. And I went back across town and I saw his wife and she was walking down the main section of Fourth Street where the Negroes be. And I called her to the car, and I asked her when was the last time she had seen her husband. And she told me that she saw him last night at 11 o'clock.
I asked her how he was dressed, and she told me he had on a shirt and dark blue trousers. I said, "I think that your husband was in the morgue."
And she said, "No."
And I said, "Well, would you come and go with me? I need to call the police station." I said, "But you will have to call because they won't give me the information."
So she went and she asked who was speaking, and Sergeant Penton was on the desk. She told him that her husband had left home last night at 11 o'clock, and she couldn't find him. And he asked her husband's name and she told him. He asked her name, and she told him, and then he wanted to know her maiden name. It was Emma Anderson before she was married. And he said, "Well, your husband is dead."
And this was about 1:30 that day, and we had found out at seven o'clock that morning, but she hadn't been notified. So she went over to the jail house, and they talked to her there and they told her that they would like for her to come back later in the afternoon, after they had held an inquest. And in the meantime we had called the lawyers of LCDC [Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, an affiliate of the ACLU] in New Orleans, and they was making phone calls to New Orleans and back to Bogalusa.
And we called the press, because at my house we had a black convention, all the Negroes was getting together, and we released the press and asked the Negroes not to do anything for at least 24 hours, give the police time to find out some evidence or make some arrests.
Feingold:
You spoke though about how you yourself would have liked to have marched tonight.
Jenkins:
Yes. As I stated before, we're just tired and it's so much happening to Negro and nobody being brought to court or anything done about it, and I would like to stage the protest march tonight. And usually when we do anything, it's really on the spur of the moment. So we're having an executive board meeting tomorrow at one o'clock, and we invited Lincoln Lynch, the assistant national director of CORE in to speak tomorrow night at a rally, and I hope at that rally we will have a march, because the time for us to do something.
Jenkins:
I would like to tell you about an incident, just to show you the things that we have to go through in Bogalusa. When the deputy sheriff [O'Neal Moore] was killed [in June of 1965], they arrested a Klansman and his bond was $2,500 [equal to $21,000 in 2021], and they signed property bonds. When Captain Sam was shot [while] using the [pay] telephone, they arrested the man that shot him, and he was released on a $2,500 bond.We had three Negro boys to go in Acme Cafe, which is supposed to be integrated [as required by the Civil Rights Act]. And they were in there and Fletcher Anderson went outside, he was a Negro to let his windows up on his car, and he was attacked by some white men and beaten unconscious. Well, they carried him [Anderson] to jail that night and we stayed to the jail house 'til five o'clock in the morning. They didn't make an arrest. They brought the white men over that had beaten him. Fletcher Was standing there, and blood was flowing all over everywhere, and violent. The police told me that he just didn't feel right talking to Fletcher bleeding that way, and that I could carry them over to the Charity hospital.
We went to the Charity hospital, and when the doctor asked what had happened, he said, "I was attacked by some Klansmen." He said, "Well, go to another doctor because I'm not going to wait on you." And he wouldn't wait on him.
We went back to the jail house and they let him go and kept Fletcher's car, because his car had been shot in. The next day they released the car, and two days later they arrested Fletcher, Layton, and Bruce Bang, carried them to Franklinton, and their bond was set at $25,000 each [equal to $211,000 in 2021].
Feingold:
And what were they charged with?
Jenkins:
They were charged with —
Feingold:
Attempted murder?
Jenkins:
Attempted murder. And you see, the rest of the bonds [for the Klansmen] had been $2,500, and theirs was $25,000. Well, we called a lawyer, then we tried to protest this bond, but we couldn't. And then we tried to get property owners to sign the bond, and we got enough property owners. They gave us the run around. They said the bond was in Franklinton. When we get the property owners to the Franklinton, they said that bond was in Bogalusa. We get the Bogalusa, they had carried the bond back to Franklinton. That went on for nine days.Then when we got the Negroes there, if their property was valued — I'll give you an example. Robert Hicks's property was valued at $3,200 in the assessor's office, and you walk over the sheriff department in the same building where he signed the bond, and it was the only valued for a hundred dollars, so you didn't have enough Negroes to raise that money. And we had to put up cash, $1,500, to get two men out of jail, and then they put up $750 for the other man.
So you can see how things are going in Bogalusa. I just can't see why the federal government just don't come in and federalize this town, and try to straighten it out, because everything is so crooked, even the books in the office. Everybody knows that if the sheriff and assessor is in the same building that books should be the same, tabulate.
And for instance, there was a Negro man, it's just all coming back to me now, that would be October the 20th [1965], who is not in the movement, but he had been in TB hospital. He was beaten, and he went to a court and testified against these people when they had beaten him. They picked him up and put him in jail for non-[child] support. He's in jail now with the rest of the prisoners. With TB, with slips from the TB hospital, asking him to come in. It was very important for report. And they won't let him be a trustee, and they won't let him out to see a doctor. So those are the things that you put up with here in Bogalusa.
Feingold:
You mentioned before about problems you would have had with housing.
Jenkins:
Oh yes. We have a problem here with the housing authorities. They call them "projects," and it's units that's built. So we felt that if the federal government was going to match these funds, that they shouldn't build any more segregated projects in Bogalusa. And we wrote a complaint to the housing authorities and they come in and investigate it. And sometimes I think they are southerners right out of Bogalusa, the way they act, when they come in.They sent me a letter, which I have here, asking to let them know what we meant about building them in segregated areas, so we sent a map and drew it where they were putting them right in the Negro areas, and we knew white people wasn't going to move in this area. So they asked us to pick out places where we thought white and Negroes could live together, and we did, where it was near the white neighborhood and near the Negro section.
But they turned our complaint down, and the federal government has given them money to build these houses, and that's wrong too. So sometimes you wonder, is it any use to write complaints? Because your complaints go in and there's nothing down about them.
Feingold:
You sent them a map with a Negro and white areas all clearly marked out and they still didn't do anything?
Jenkins:
Right, and they sent mens in to go and see these areas, and see where the projects was being built, but they still haven't done anything about it. And they just said that they didn't have a complaint.
Feingold:
You also mentioned something before about the manpower training.[Vocational training was one of the Office of Economic Opportunity programs authorized by the federal Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 — commonly known as the "War on Poverty."]
Jenkins:
Yeah. They have a manpower development program here, and that failed for us too. And everything that we go to ask for, they tell us we're only a third of the population, so any board they set up, they put one-third Negroes on it. And the white people select the Negroes who are the Toms, the conservative Negroes, to be on it.This manpower development program had set up a secretary of course here, and they asked you to come in and take a test and pass. And when they pick the people for the school, they put 26 whites and four Negroes, and we felt that this was unjust because if it's a third, why not give us 10 and take 20 whites?
And we have another school here. It's the trade school, and it was a segregated school, so we asked for a class. And they had a nursing and secretarial course, drafting, everything is offered in this school. And finally, we got a class in, but it's all Negro. It's segregated too, and you go certain days, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So I just don't see anybody here in Bogalusa complying with the federal law, because not only the trade schools are not complying, but you have the exchange stores.
Any place that's hiring over a hundred employees are compelled [by the Civil Rights Act] to hire Negroes, and they won't comply either. I put in an application at Sears and Roebuck [department store], everybody knows about Sears Roebuck, and I took the test, and she told me she would call me. She never did, and I sent a letter off, or I filed a complaint for it, and some guy from the federal department was supposed to come in and talk to me. And that's been about three months ago, and he just hadn't made it yet.
Feingold:
Have there been any friendly whites at all in Bogalusa?
Jenkins:
I don't understand you
Feingold:
Have there been any whites who have stood up for the Negroes?
Jenkins:
Yes. I would say that Reverend Shepherd did. He was the minister here in Bogalusa, and he was one of the citizens who had invited Brook Hayes. And he had gone all out for Negroes, and we were invited to his church. But they began to burn crosses in his yard, and he was getting threatening telephone calls, and he would call the telephone company and tell them that his line was tapped, but it didn't do any good. And finally, they ran Reverend Shepherd out of town. And there was the guy here, what was it, Bloomingburg. He had a radio station. They shot into his station because he was for the Negroes, and he had to leave.We had another guy who once spoke out for Negroes that published the Bogalusa Daily News. His name is Lou Major, and he even told the Klansman, if they didn't stop harassing him, that he would expose them. They painted his house one night while he was away, they painted his car, and they threatened his children, and they burned crosses in his yard. But I don't know who got to Lou Major, but he changed now, and he's very conservative, and he won't print things that really happened about Negroes and Bogalusa.
That's the one thing, we really don't get too much news out about things that's going on, because it hasn't been quiet since the movement started about 19 months ago. You know that we integrated the restaurants here in Bogalusa. At least they are supposed to be integrated, but we never go in a restaurant without the Deacons on guard. [The managers] call the police the minute that we go in, so they are not integrated. But we don't say we have "testing," we're just going down to eat.
And one day I went in the Acme Cafe, which is on Coleman street, the heart of Bogalusa. And I ordered my food, and the three fellows with me, they ordered theirs. And the waitress brought the water, and she slammed the glass on the table, and she brought the food, and she set it all in front of me. So we didn't say anything, I passed it around to each of the fellows, and when we were finish with it, she walked back to the table. And she was so pleasant, she had a pretty smile on her face, and she said, "Would you niggers care for anything else?"
And I asked her, I said, "What did you say?" She said, "I said, 'Would you niggers care for anything else?'" So I asked to see the manager, and the lady that was on the register, she asked her did she say it, and she said, "Yes, they're niggers, aren't they?"
So we run into some little funny incidents too, and we just charged it to our personal image from the way they talk to us. But it's so much happening in Bogalusa until really we should have somebody to just take down incident reports every day. Then we would be able to keep up with it, because it's hard to kind of think of it. And then sometime you can sit down, and you can talk, and it all comes back to you.
Feingold:
The Klan is [still] pretty active around here?
Jenkins:
Yes, but I think the Deacons kind of quieting the Klans down, and then they are under an injunction too. But I don't think they care too much about that injunction, because at the Negro school, they have a white Dairy Queen right at the Negro school. And we have a big broadcast for the Negro kids, and it was sponsored then for two nights, and the Klansmans come, and they just took over around the school. They threw cherry bombs at the school, and we had to call the police. And that night we had the police and the Deacons there, and that was one night I really thought it would be a riot, but they finally got everybody off, and everything was so.But the Klansmen do a lot of things. They catch the kids out, and they harass the kids. And another thing they tell us, it's against the law to carry guns, but the Klansmen have gun racks in their trucks, and ride up and down the streets with them, but they never make an arrest on them. And if they do anything, they don't stay in jail, they turn them right out, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Feingold:
And just in closing, I had a couple of personal questions. First of all, could you tell me how old you are, and how many children you have, and how old they are?
Jenkins:
Yeah. I'm 39 years old. I have three children, one girl and two boys. My daughter's in college at Dordt university. I have a son in Detroit working at Ford's Motor Company, and my baby is 13 years old, and he will be entering the white school this year in the ninth grade.
Feingold:
Thank you very much.
Copyright © Gayle Jenkins, Mimi Feingold, 1966
For background & more information see: Confronting the Klan in Bogalusa With Nonviolence & Self-Defense
Additional web links: Bogalusa LA Movement
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