Civil Rights Events

Mississippi Early 1963

Violence and Death in and near Greenwood

 

Here is a useful map of Mississippi.  https://socketize.com/7124/no7141/

 

 

Defying generations of white-supremacy, a small trickle of Leflore county Blacks continue to show up at the courthouse even though they know they won't be allowed to register. For sharecroppers and farm laborers in the Mississippi Delta, winter is the lean time, the hard time. With no work and nothing to eat, they rely on federal surplus food commodities for survival. The White Citizens Council strikes back — at poor people in general, not just the few Blacks trying to register. The Council controls Greenwood politics, no politician can win election without their support, and as winter closes in they order the County Board of Supervisors to stop distributing federal food aid to 22,000 Leflore County citizens — most of them Black, a few poor white or Choctaw.

 

 

In this era before Food Stamps, the federal "commodity" programs staved off starvation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provided basic food commodities — bags of flour, rice & beans, boxes of canned goods, dairy products, and so on — to states, counties, and private welfare agencies who distributed them to poor and hungry families.  …

 

 

By mid-winter, conditions are desperate. Sam Block and Wazir Peacock inform SNCC headquarters in Atlanta:

 

 

Saturday, January 19, 1963. ... these people here are in a very, very bad need for food and clothes. Look at a case like this man, named Mr. Meeks, who is thirty-seven years old. His wife is thirty-three years old, and they have eleven children, ages ranging from seventeen down to eight months. Seven of the children are school age and not a one is attending school because they have no money, no food, no clothes, and no wood to keep warm by, and they now want to go register. The house they are living in has no paper or nothing on the walls and you can look at the ground through the floor and if you are not careful you will step in one of those holes and break your leg.

 

…

 

 

SNCC sends word to its supporters on college campuses and in Friends of SNCC chapters throughout the country — and people respond. Comedian Dick Gregory charters a plane to deliver emergency food supplies to Greenwood. He becomes a Movement stalwart, raising funds, participating in demonstrations, enduring beatings and arrests in the cause of Freedom.

 

 

Michigan State students Ivanhoe Donaldson and Ben Taylor drive a truckload of food, clothing, and medicine 1,000 miles down into the Mississippi Delta over the Christmas holidays. The local cops are tipped off — perhaps by some federal agency — and the two are busted in Clarksdale for "possesion of narcotics." The supposed "narcotics" are actually aspirin and vitamins. They are held on $15,000 bail (equal to $115,000 in 2012). After 11 days in jail, a nation-wide protest gets them released, but the confiscated food, clothing, and medicine mysteriously disappears from police custody before it can be returned to them. Ivanhoe is not intimidated, in the following months he delivers a dozen truckloads of food to embattled Greenwood and goes on to become a SNCC field secretary.

 

 

Meanwhile, the Kennedy administration and U.S. Department of Justice do nothing effective to protect the voting rights of Black citizens. With legal support provided by Dr. King, SNCC sues Attorney General Robert Kennedy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in January of 1963 demanding that they enforce existing federal voting rights laws. Rather than performing their Constitutionally-required duty to protect the rights of all citizens, federal lawyers quash the suit.

 

 

But violence, intimidation, beatings, arrests, and federal dereliction, all fail to halt the growing movement. And the food blockade backfires.

 

 

Whenever we were able to get a little something to give to a hungry family, we also talked about how they ought to register. The food was ...identified in the minds of everyone as food for those who want to be free, and the minimum requirement for freedom is identified as registration to vote. — Bob Moses (Greenwood Food 1-2).

 

 

In late February, an anonymous caller warns that the new office SNCC was finally able to rent is going to be destroyed. Four adjacent Black businesses are burnt in a bungled arson attempt, but they miss the SNCC office. When Sam [Block] describes the fire as "arson" at a mass meeting he is arrested for "statements calculated to breach the peace." It is his seventh Movement arrest in Greenwood (Marching 1).

 

 

Over one hundred local Black people angrily packed the courthouse. “They were drinking out of the [white] water fountain. They really had their chests stuck out. They came to get Sam out of jail,” recalled SNCC’s Willie Peacock. Part of their anger was caused by the devastating impact of the cut-off of the commodity supplemental food program in retaliation for the growing voter registration campaign. As Bob Moses noted, “For the first time they were seeing the connection between political participation and food on their table (Sam 3).

 

 

More than one hundred Black protesters show up at City Hall on the day of Sam's trial — the first mass protest by Greenwood Blacks in living memory. Sam is sentenced to 6 months in jail and a $500 fine. The Judge offers to suspend the sentence if Sam agrees to leave town and halt efforts to register Black voters. Replies Sam: "Judge, I ain't gonna do that." He is released on bond pending appeal, and that night addresses a mass meeting of 250 people — the largest mass meeting to date (Marching 1).

 

 

… throwing me in jail and holding me like that and charging me with arson [Sam Block recalled] people came from everywhere, out of the cotton fields with dirty boots on. And they had my trial in a little kangeroo court … And that is when the movement really began to take off. …  I refused to leave.  And that again instilled the faith in the

people that were there around me (Interview 42).

 

 

On Tuesday, February 26, more than 200 Blacks line up at the Courthouse to register to vote. They know they will not be allowed to register, but attempting to do so has become for them a symbol of both pride and defiance. And the white power-structure recognizes it as such. The police order them to disperse. They hold their ground, remaining in line. The Registrar delays and evades, admitting only a few to fill out the application and take the so-called "literacy test." Those few who manage to take the test are rejected. But in Leflore County fear is beginning to lose its grip.

 

 

That night, KKK nightriders ambush a SNCC car on the road, firing 13 rounds from a .45 caliber machine gun at Jimmy Travis, Bob Moses, and VEP Field Director Randolph Blackwell. [Travis had been driving] Jimmy is hit twice, in the neck and shoulder [Moses had had to take the wheel], and has to be rushed to the nearest hospital willing to treat Black freedom fighters. From around the nation demands for protection and enforcement of federal voting rights laws are sent to Washington. The Kennedy administration takes no noticeable action (Marching 1-2).

 

 

Sam Block narrates:

 

 

Bob and Randolph and Jimmy came over from Greenwood and about 8:30 or 9:00 that night Bob and Randall and Jimmy decided that they would leave and go back to Greenville.  … Bob had noticed this car circling the block prior to their leaving but he didn't tell us. So they left and stopped at the 82 Grill to get something to eat and the car trailed them and it was then Bob called Willie and I back to tell Willie and I that we should close up the office and try to go on home immediately because he had noticed this white car with four men in it wearing dark shades circling the office quite frequently and he didn't know what they were up to.

 

 

So they left and they took a back road into Itta Bena going on to Greenville. And just as I understand they got, approached Itta Bena, the car pulled up aside them, went by them at a high speed and recognized them and went up the highway and turned around and came back and fired at the car with a submachine gun.  …

 

 

 So we went to the hospital and by the time Willie and I got there Jimmy was lying

on the table and I understand they refused to wait on him because they said they didn't

have proper facilities. But one of the persons who was there said one of the reasons was they really didn't want him there anyway. And we had to take him to Jackson. So we didn't have any money to get an ambulance. We had to wait until the next morning. The man wouldn't transport him to Jackson, it was a black ambulance driver, unless we had the funds or something. Anyway the next morning we took him to Jackson and that is where Jimmy was operated on (Interview 30-31).

 

 

After Travis was stabilized and transferred to Jackson University Hospital, the doctor there told the twenty-year-old Travis that he had barely survived the bullet lodged in his spinal cord (Jimmy 2).

 

 

COFO calls on all voter-registration workers in Mississippi to concentrate on Greenwood to show that Klan terror cannot halt a growing freedom movement. By early March, dozens of SNCC organizers, plus some CORE field secretaries and SCLC staff members are working out of the Greenwood SNCC/COFO office in defiance of Klan terror, police repression, and Citizen Council economic retaliation. Whites shoot at a car containing Sam, Wazir, and local students working with the movement (Marching 1-3).

 

 

Sam described the incident.

 

 

So this particular night [March 6] -- I had asmatha, I am an asmathic-- we are at the church and I said, "Look I have to have my medicine."  Peacock said, "Man, do you have to have it right now." I said, "Yes, I have to have it right now." So we got in the car with his girlfriend and my girlfriend--they were two sisters. I was driving, we drove back to the office across the tracks over to MacLaurin.  And my girlfriend said, "Sam, look don't get out of the car, please don't get out of this car." I said, "Why?" She said, "I just feel

that something is going to happen." I said, "Look, I have got to have my medication."

And I went to open the door of the car and six white men drove up in a station wagon

and fired into the car shooting deer slugs at close range. Shot directly through the

front window and the bullet went into a house and there was a lady and a baby lying

in bed there and it went directly into the mattress. Had the shots been fired just an

inch or so higher they would have killed those people because the deer slugs did not

spread until they got out. But Peacock hit the floor and I hit the floor and said I had

been hurt, been shot. I just had glass and stuff in my face.

 

 

Anyway we called the police. And one thing, the first policeman to arrive was

Captain Usser and he told Peacock' girlfriend,, said, "Essie, you know I know

you." She said, "Yes sir, I know you do."  "Don't you know these two niggers right here

are going to get you killed?" She said, "Well, yes sir, I see now." "You had better

stop hanging around these two niggers right here. If you don't you are going to end up

dead."

 

 

So the police came then and instead of taking us to the hospital they wanted to

take us to jail because they accused me of plotting the shooting to receive cheap

publicity. So we went to the hospital and the glass was removed from my face and we

came back and continued to work and people began to give out the food and stuff and

people were going down to the courthouse then in mass droves (Interview 27-28).

 

 

… gunfire punched 27 holes in the car. Peacock jumped out of the vehicle and began throwing bricks at the car that had attacked them as it sped away. They later discovered that a local policeman, who worked with one of the women in the car, had fired at them (Willie 3).

 

 

Though he knows full well who is responsible, Greenwood mayor Charles Sampson denies that white racists are the perpetrators. He falsely accuses SNCC of faking the attack to garner support. On March 24th the Klan finally succeeds in fire-bombing the office. It is destroyed. The Movement continues.

 

 

… Dewey Greene takes a leading role in encouraging voter-registration, son George and daughter Freddie are leaders among the local students. On the night of March 26, the Klan shoots into the Greene home, narrowly missing three of the children. The Greenes are a well- respected family in Greenwood's Black community and instead of intimidating people the shooting does just the opposite.

 

 

“Now the morning of the march we were at the church there and began singing. [James] Forman came by; he was actually on his way out of town, he was driving. So he suggested that maybe we ought to go down to City Hall and protest the shooting. We did not anticipate that the police would react as they did. We were simply going to the police station and request a conference with the police chief asking for police protection in light of the shooting. And they met us there with the dogs and with guns and so forth and I guess, as Jim says, they simply went berserk for a little while. ...”  — Bob Moses

 

 

The marchers — men, women, and children — are singing and praying as they approach City Hall. Suddenly, they are attacked by police dogs and beaten by club-wielding cops. SNCC leaders Bob Moses, Jim Forman, Wazir Peacock, Frank Smith, and six Greenwood activists are arrested. …

 

 

The Greenwood Movement is not intimidated by dogs or cops or arrests. Where a year earlier local Blacks feared to be seen in the company of Sam Block or Wazir Peacock, now a thousand or more are involved in the Movement in one way or another — protesting, canvassing, trying to register, attending meetings, housing and feeding organizers, providing bail money, and so on. By 10am the next morning there are 50 Blacks lined up at the courthouse to register, by noon more than 100. A small army of helmeted police confront them. Again they attack with dogs and clubs. SNCC field secretary Charlie Cobb reports:

 

 

With the events of the morning of the 28th, the issues in Greenwood broadened beyond voter registration and became more basic. The issue now was, Did people have a right to walk the streets which they had paid for, with whomever they please, as long as they are orderly and obey all traffic laws? The city's answer was, Not if you're a nigger! There was a very direct link between this issue and voter registration, because for years attempting to register to vote for Negroes meant preparing alone to suffer physical assault while making the attempt, economic reprisals after the attempt, and sometimes death. To go with friends and neighbors made the attempt less frightening and reduced the chances of physical assault at the courthouse, since cowards don't like to openly attack numbers. It also reduced the chance of economic reprisal, since the firing of one hundred Negro maids would put the good white housewives of Greenwood in a bind ('tis a grim life for Miss Ann without Mary, Sally, or Sam).

 

 

Photos of police dogs savaging nonviolent protesters and news describing denial of basic voting rights flash across the world, embarrassing the Kennedy administration on the world stage and undercutting his "Free World" diplomacy at the United Nations. Moses and the others arrested on the 27th are convicted of "disorderly conduct" and given the maximum sentence, four months in prison and a $200 fine. Hoping to force the Department of Justice to file suit against the county's interference with the right to vote, they refuse to pay the fine or pay bail while the case is appealed.

 

 

 But the Department of Justice under Attorney General Robert Kennedy cuts a deal instead. Eager to halt the embarrassing news stories coming out of Greenwood, the Feds agree not to file a voting rights suit against local officials. In return, the Greenwood power-structure agrees to release Moses and the others without bond while their case is appealed, and to stop using police brutality against Blacks trying to register. The county also agrees to resume food distribution so long as it is paid for by the federal government (in other words, the Feds supply not only the food, but also pick up the distribution costs which everywhere else in the nation are carried by the county). This allows Leflore politicians to assure their segregationist supporters that local taxes are not being used to "reward uppity Blacks" with free food (Marching 4-7).

 

 

Sam Block continues his story.

 

 

What happened after Jimmy's shooting I got on the road a lot and began to raise

money, spent a lot of time around Chicago and New York and California speaking to

raise money for the movement and to try to get other people involved.

 

…

 

I wanted to be in Greenwood. But they thought too and felt that I had become

battle fatigued. I had almost been killed by a speeding truck, I had to jump behind a

telephone poll to escape death. Oh, I had been beaten in the genesis in Greenwood real

bad, been pushed under a car and left for dead .... {Short break} The people themselves did not want me to leave but it was a necessity. They felt that if anyone could tell the story about what was going on in Greenwood it was me because it was my project, I was the first to go into Greenwood. From there, as you know, we got Dick Gregory and Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier and others began to pull food into Greenwood. And the mass marches really began to take place then (Interview 32, 33).

 

 

With the cops no longer attacking Blacks trying to register to vote, embarrassing photos stop coming out of Greenwood, which relieves the Kennedys. But the deal only halts police repression. The KKK continues to threaten Black voters with terrorist violence and the Citizens Council continues to coerce Blacks with economic terror, firing and evicting those who try to register. And without federal voting rights enforcement, the Registrar is free to continue rigging the application and "literacy test" to prevent most Blacks from actually registering. In the following months, 1500 Blacks risk life and economic survival by journeying to the courthouse, but only a handful are added to the voting rolls. By the end of 1963 there are only 268 Black voters in Leflore County compared to 10,000 white voters, even though 65% of the population is Black (Marching 4-8).

 

 

After the Greenwood cops agree to stop assaulting Blacks trying to register and LeFlore county resumes food distribution, voter registration organizers once again expand outward into surrounding counties. Greenwood becomes the hub of activity for the Delta counties of LeFlore, Holmes, Carroll, Tallahatchie, Sunflower, and Humphreys. And organizers return to the areas around Laurel, Meridian, Hattiesburg, Holly Springs, and Vicksburg.

 

 

White resistance remains vicious. In Holmes county, Hartman Turnbow, a farmer, is one of the first Blacks to try to register since the end of Reconstruction. He leads 12 others to the county courthouse. Klan nightriders surround his home, firebomb it, and then shoot at him, his wife, and daughter when they try to escape the burning building. Turnbow grabs his rifle and returns fire, driving them off. The county Sheriff arrests Turnbow, accusing him of firebombing his own house and shooting it full of holes to win sympathy from Northern movement supporters. Bob Moses and three other SNCC organizers are also arrested. A local court convicts them — without a shred of evidence — but the charges are eventually dismissed when appealed to federal court.

 

 

The Movement carries on, and people of courage respond. In Sunflower County, Fannie Lou Hamer, 46 years old, mother of two children, a sharecropper and plantation worker all her life, steps up to register after talking to SNCC organizers and attending a voter registration mass meeting. She and almost 20 others go down to the courthouse in Indianola. The cops stop the old bus they are using, and arrest the driver because the bus is "the wrong color." When Mrs. Hamer returns home she is fired from her job and evicted from her home of 18 years. Klan marauders shoot up the house of a friend who gives her shelter. Fannie Lou Hamer is not intimidated, she commits her life and soul to the Freedom Movement, first as an SCLC Citizenship School teacher, then as a SNCC field secretary and MFDP candidate for Congress  (Voter Registration 1-2).

 

 

Works cited:

 

 

“Greenwood Food Blockage (Winter).”  Civil Rights Movement History 1962.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962jackson

 

 

“Interview with Sam Block.”  Digital Education Systems.  December 12, 1986.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/nars/js_block_oh-r.pdf

 

 

“Jimmy Travis Shot in Greenwood.” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University.  Web.  https://snccdigital.org/events/jimmy-travis-shot-greenwood/

 

 

“Marching for Freedom in Greenwood (Feb-Mar).”  Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement History and Timeline, 1963 Jan-June.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963fdgreen

 

 

“Sam Block.” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University.  Web.  https://snccdigital.org/people/sam-block/

 

 

“Voter Registration Movement Expands in Mississippi.”  Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement History and Timeline, 1963 Jan-June.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963delta

 

 

“Willie Peacock.”  SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University.  Web.   https://snccdigital.org/people/willie-peacock/



Civil Rights Events

Mississippi 1962

Movement Leaders Refuse to Quit

Here is a useful map of Mississippi.  https://socketize.com/7124/no7141/

After being released from jail in December of 1961, Bob Moses and the other SNCC organizers analyze the successes and failures of the McComb voter registration campaign. It is clear that racist opposition to Black voting rights in Mississippi is so ferocious, so violent, so widespread, that only by uniting all of the state's civil rights organizations into a coordinated effort is there any hope of success.

Moses and Tom Gaither of CORE circulate a memo proposing formation of a coalition. They are determined not to repeat in Mississippi the unproductive conflicts between national civil rights organizations that have so often occurred elsewhere. Statewide NAACP Chairman Aaron Henry agrees with them. In February [1962], representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP, along with local community leaders, create the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) to be a vehicle through which civil rights organizations working in Mississippi can work together. The name is taken from an earlier coalition effort to support the Freedom Riders. A grant request to fund COFO voter registration activities is submitted to the Voter Education Project (VEP).

The national leaders of the three organizations initially oppose the idea out of fear that each will lose visibility within it — with consequent loss of northern funds. But the local activists and leaders on the ground in Mississippi, those who are closest to the suffering of the people and the necessities of the struggle in that state, insist that success — indeed, survival — require organizational cooperation rather than competition.

In August, a meeting is held in Clarksdale to formalize COFO. Attending are Moses, Jim Forman and a dozen other SNCC workers, Dave Dennis of CORE, James Bevel of SCLC, and others. NAACP leader Aaron Henry is elected President, Rev. R.L.T. Smith is named Treasurer, attorney Carsie Hall becomes Secretary, and Bob Moses is appointed the COFO state-wide Project Director. An agreement is made that CORE will focus its registration efforts in Mississippi's 4th Congressional District centered around Meridian and Canton, SNCC will work the other four districts including the Delta region around Greenwood and the Pearl River area around McComb. For their part, SCLC will continue its Citizenship school program throughout the state, and the NAACP will concentrate on the judicial aspects of the struggle.

In September, VEP funds COFO organizing projects in the Mississippi Delta counties of Bolivar, Coahoma, Leflore, and Sunflower where SNCC field secretaries are already working. Over the following year VEP gives more than $50,000 (equal to $380,000 in 2012) to a number of voter registration projects in Mississippi (Council 1-2).

When the arrested SNCC field secretaries are finally released from jail in Pike County, they join other SNCC organizers — many newly hired with VEP money — in resuming voter registration work. Bob Moses, Paul & Catherine Brooks, James Bevel & Diane Nash (newly married), and Bernard Lafayette in Jackson; Lester McKinnie in Laurel; Charles McLaurin, Dorie Ladner, and Colia Lidell in Ruleville; James Jones in Clarksdale, Mattie Bivens in Cleveland, Frank Smith in Holly Springs; Emma Bell in Greenville; and Curtis Hayes and Hollis Watkins in Hattiesburg.

Sam Block, a young Mississippi native and SCLC Citizenship School teacher, is assigned to Greenwood, the seat of Leflore County and the unofficial capitol of the Mississippi Delta. Here, cotton is still king, 800,000 bales pass through Greenwood each year. For the most part the work is still hand-labor, plantation-style — but under the urging of the White Citizens Council, land owners are now bringing in machines to replace and displace Black field-hands. With the rise of the Freedom Movement and increased Black assertiveness, "Negro-removal" is now the strategy of Mississippi's white power-structure. Between 1950 and 1960, some 200,000 Blacks are forced to leave the Delta, by 1964 the number of Black sharecroppers is roughly half of what it was six years earlier. Most of those forced off the land migrate to the urban ghettos of the North.

Those who still remain endure grinding poverty and unyielding oppression. According to the 1960 Census, annual median income for rural Blacks in the Delta is just $452 (equal to $3,800 in 2017). On average, white children in the Delta receive 10 years of public schooling, Blacks less than 5 years in schools that are so ill-equipped that few are accredited. Segregation remains absolute and the effects are stark.

For Blacks, segregation, exploitation, and abuse permeate every aspect of life. Though almost two-thirds of the county is Black, 131 of the county's 168 hospital beds are reserved for whites-only. More than 80% of Blacks live in dwellings rated "sub-standard," but their tar-paper shacks with a single light bulb are charged more for electricity than whites living in modern homes.

In Leflore County, almost 100% of whites are registered to vote, compared to just 268 Blacks (2%). In the seven years since the Brown decision, only 40 Blacks have been allowed to register (compared to 1,664 whites (Mississippi Voter – Greenwood 1-2).

In 1961, Mississippi-native Sam Block was stationed at an Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas, as Freedom Riders streamed into Mississippi. He watched them excitedly. “I just wanted to be part of it,” recalled Block, “to be part of a movement that was doing something to eradicate the conditions that I was forced to live in all my life but wasn’t able to do anything about.”

After leaving the Air Force, he returned to his hometown of Cleveland, Mississippi and soon ran into an old family acquaintance and movement stalwart, Amzie Moore. “Get involved with the Movement,” Moore urged Block. With Moore’s help, Block, then 23-years-old, quietly set up a group of semi-underground citizenship schools around town.

This work caught the attention of SNCC’s Mississippi project director Bob Moses, who was planning to expand SNCC’s voter registration efforts into the Delta region. He asked Block where he would like to work. “Greenwood, Mississippi,” Block responded, thinking back on the lynching of Emmett Till in nearby Money, Mississippi. Moses asked again if Block was sure that he wanted to work in Greenwood, a bastion of the white supremacist Citizens’ Council. Again, Sam said yes.

He entered the cotton processing city without an established network of contacts. He remembered “hanging out in the pool halls, wherever people were, the Laundromat, run around the grocery stores,” to meet people. He also went from door-to-door “sort of testing the pulse of the people.”

It did not take long for his presence to become known. His landlady received threatening phone calls and asked Block to move. He lived out of an abandoned car for a time and had difficulty finding enough food to eat. But he was committed. “If I got a chance to do anything to help people, especially black people, then I was gonna do it.” (Sam 1-3).

Sam is soon joined by Rust College graduate Willie (Wazir) Peacock, and then Luvaugn Brown, and Lawrence Guyot.

Sam Block: I canvassed every day and every night until I found about seven or eight people to carry up to register ... We went up to register and it was the first time visiting the courthouse in Greenwood, Mississippi, and the sheriff came up to me and he asked me, he said, "Nigger, where you from?" I told him, "Well, I'm a native Mississippian." He said, "Yeh, yeh, I know that, but where you from? ... I know you ain't from here, cause I know every nigger and his mammy." I said, "Well, you know all the niggers, do you know any colored people?"

He got angry. He spat in my face and walked. So he came back and turned around and told me, "I don't want to see you in town any more. The best thing you better do is pack your clothes and get out and don't never come back no more." I said, "Well, sheriff, if you don't want to see me here, I think the best thing for you to do is pack your clothes and leave, get out of town, 'cause I'm here to stay, I came here to do a job and this is my intention, I'm going to do this job."

White racists attack the SNCC office, and the SNCC organizers barely escape over the roof tops. The building is trashed, and the frightened landlord evicts them. The fear is so intense that people cross to the other side of the street rather than walk past Sam or Wazir and risk whites observing them in proximity to the "race-mixing agitators." It is months before anyone else in the Black community will rent space intended for voter registration work.

Sam and Wazir dig in deep, and hold on. They continue organizing in Greenwood without an office. Fear is pervasive among Greenwood Blacks. Fear of being fired. Fear of being evicted. Fear of beatings, bombings, and murder. Fear that the SNCC workers will stir up trouble and violence and then leave. But gradually, week by week, month by month, as Sam and Wazir hold on, trust is built and their courage inspires first the young students and then their parents (Mississippi Voter 3-4).

About defying white Greenwood police, “They knew we were Mississippians, and to see us facing up to them and standing up to them, they couldn’t understand what had happened, what had gone wrong,” Peacock remembered (Willie 1).

As Block sunk his roots into Greenwood’s Black community, he recognized that there was a hidden anger and desire for change. Local people “were looking for someone who could give form and expression to ideas and thoughts they had had for years,” reflected Block (Sam 3).

Wazir Peacock: Greenwood was so organized — there was not one block that we couldn't have — it was like guerrilla war, we could stop anywhere and duck out of sight, go into somebody's house. At every block in the Black neighborhood. So that's one thing that kept us alive 'cause they would see us at night and the cops would think it was an opportunity to get us, speed up and try to turn around. When they turned around we'd be watching out a window somewhere, see them come back to try to find us.

A new office is finally rented, a church dares to open its doors for a voter registration meeting, and the community begins coming together. Slowly, one by one, two by two, a few Leflore County Blacks begin to make the dangerous journey down to the courthouse to try to register to vote. But in the first six months, only five Blacks of the dozens who try are actually registered (Mississippi Voter – Greenwood 5).

Jackson is Mississippi's capitol and most significant urban area. In 1960, 40% of its 150,000 residents are Black, and Blacks are a clear majority in the surrounding rural areas of Hinds, Madison, and Rankin counties. Jackson is totally segregated, and Blacks are restricted to the lowest-paid menial jobs in the public and private sectors. Jackson is a White Citizens Council stronghold and the Council dominates the local political scene. Mayor Allen Thompson is a rabid segregationist, as are the Governor and state legislators. A miasma of fear lays heavy over the Black community, ruthless police brutality is common, and Klan terrorists lurk in the shadows ready to strike down anyone who challenges the racial order.

In the fall of 1961 and into early 1962, SNCC organizers try to organize protests and register voters in Jackson, but make little headway against police repression and the grip of fear. SNCC moves its main focus into the Mississippi Delta region around Greenwood where there is more hope of success. This leaves the NAACP as the main civil rights organization with an ongoing presence in Jackson. But the Jackson NAACP is largely moribund, most of its Youth Councils are dormant, and only the heroic efforts of NAACP State Field Director Medgar Evers keeps the organization barely alive.

The NAACP's national leadership shun direct-action protests in favor of lawsuits in federal Court, but unlike Alabama where Federal Judge Frank Johnson often rules in favor of civil rights, Mississippi Federal Judge Harold Cox (appointed by President Kennedy) is an ardent segregationist. He almost always rules against the NAACP, forcing them to appeal each case to the Federal Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans, a process that slows and limits progress.

The national NAACP also emphasizes voter registration, but unlike SNCC who work with the masses of Black sharecroppers, maids, and laborers, the NAACP concentrates their efforts on the small Black elite — ministers, professionals, teachers, business owners. But in Mississippi, the Black elite are vulnerable to the economic terrorism of the White Citizens Council. With some notable exceptions, in 1962 most of them are still unwilling to risk attempting to register.

Back in the fall of 1961, Tougaloo student Colia Lidell (later Colia Lafayette) and Tougaloo teacher Hunter Bear (John Salter) began reactivating and rebuilding the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council (NJYC). By early 1962 it has slowly begun to make headway against the palpable fear (Jackson 1-3).

Hunter Bear was the product of a racially mixed marriage.  Adopted by a family named Salter, Hunter’s father was essentially a full-blooded Indian of the Northeast. His mother was an Anglo, mostly Scottish.  He had experienced extreme racism while being raised amongst the Navaho in Arizona.  Following the Freedom Rides, wanting to immerse himself in civil rights work in the South, possessing a master’s degree in Sociology, he had sought a teaching position at a Black college in the South and had been hired to instruct at Tougaloo College near Jacksonville.  Colia Lidell, a student, had heard him give a speech about American government and “how we needed to become involved in the world outside the campus.”  Colia invited him to give a speech in North Jackson about the Interstate Commerce Commission and the meaning of its desegregation order.  

I went off to that evening and I spoke. And it was a well-prepared speech. The Interstate Commerce Commission had just issued an order desegregating interstate bus traffic as a result of the Freedom Rides. And on the basis of that there was a little chink [in the social walls of segregation] here and there, but there wasn't much. Mississippi's approach, and that of much of the hard core South, was to just ignore things. But anyway, that was my pioneer voyage into the Mississippi civil rights waters, and everybody was very pleased. So pleased that Colia asked if I'd be the adult advisor to the North Jackson Youth Council. And I said I would.

Medgar Evers, — who I had not yet met, — had expressed great pleasure to Colia that I agreed to do it. He'd heard of me, knew something about my labor background, things like that. I hadn't yet met him. So he was all for it. Before long I met him, and we became good friends and remained close colleagues, comrades you would say (Interview 2-4).

When school resumes in the fall of 1962, they are joined by Tougaloo student Betty Anne Poole, expelled Jackson State students Dorie and Joyce Ladner who have transferred to Tougaloo, and white exchange students Karin Kunstler and Joan Trumpauer. The NJYC continues slow but steady growth, moving their meetings from living rooms to the attic of Virden Grove church. Made up mainly of students from Tougaloo and Jackson State and from Lanier, Hill, and Brinkley high schools, along with some school dropouts and young professor Hunter Bear as their "adult" advisor, they begin distributing the North Jackson Action, a mimeographed newsletter [printed in Memphis and smuggled into Jackson] (Jackson 4).

You know, things occurred that certainly gave the measure of Mississippi's intransigence.  The shooting of Corporal Roman Duckworth, Jr. at Taylorville, — Black corporal, military police, five children, wife getting ready to give birth to the sixth child in Laurel. He was asleep in the bus when it crossed from Tennessee into Mississippi. And in Tennessee you could sleep fairly safely in the front of the bus. And the only reason he did that, I think, was a space thing, but in Mississippi, —  He was sound asleep in the front of the bus, and they went all the way down and pulled into Taylorville, where a marshal named Kelly shot him to death in broad daylight in front of 30 witnesses.

The Free Press, pioneered in that story and many others stories. But these things were happening with a dreary frequency.

At the same time, Meredith, — James Meredith — was making his bid to enter 'Ole Miss. And that was beginning to heat up. I mean, the word was that he just might make it

When we looked at things in late September of '62 we saw that the state was inflamed by the imminent admission of Meredith. People were being knocked off, — Blacks, — in such things as cars hitting them at night when they were walking along the road, — things of that sort. It was a very dangerous time. I mean, these weren't accidents, this was deliberate murder (Interview 4-6).

In early October, Jackson hosts the annual state fair, a major harvest festival. It is completely segregated, the first week is for "whites only," followed by 3 days for "colored." The NJYC calls on Blacks to boycott the "second-hand fair." Any public demonstration, such as picketing, will result in immediate arrest and there is no money for bail. Anyone caught distributing boycott leaflets will also be jailed. Like resistance fighters in occupied territory, the word has to be spread secretly, through clandestine meetings and passing flyers covertly from hand to hand. A telephone tree is organized and sympathizers are asked to call their friends. October 15 is the first day of the "Negro Fair." The boycott is 90% effective, Black fair goers are few and far between to the financial discomfort of white vendors and concessionaires.

Buoyed by the success of the fair boycott, the NJYC and the revived Tougaloo NAACP chapter begin organizing a Christmas boycott of Jackson's downtown merchants (all white, of course). They adopt four key demands:

1. Equality in hiring & promotion

2. End segregation of restrooms, water fountains, lunch counters

3. Courtesy titles such as "Miss," Mrs," "Mister"

4. Service on first-come first-served basis

Medgar Evers tries to negotiate with the merchants but they refuse to meet with him. The boycott targets 150 white stores including all the "downtown" stores. The plan is to start with a small group of pickets whose inevitable arrest will dramatize the boycott, and then follow up with a campus meeting to mobilize support. Despite pleas by Medgar — who is NAACP state Field Director — the national NAACP leadership is unwilling to provide any bail funds. But enough bond money for six protesters is contributed by the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), NY attorney Victor Rabinowitz, and Dr. King's Gandhi Fund.

On Saturday December 12, the first civil rights demonstration in Jackson since the Freedom Rides takes place on Capitol Street, the main drag of the downtown shopping district. Led by Hunter Bear, the six pickets raise their signs and a swarm of 50 cops immediately arrest them (Jackson 5-6).

There seemed to be good sentiment for this if we could actually show that we were serious. And to show that we were serious, we decided we had to do two things. We had to distribute masses of leaflets, which like the sale of the Free Press was a "subversive" activity, punishable by arrests and fines and things of that sort. [Under Mississippi law it was a crime to boycott, or advocate boycotting businesses].

And we also had to put ourselves on the line publically. And so Eldri and myself and four Black students[decide] to picket on December 12th in front of the Woolworth's store on Capitol Street (Interview 8).

The mass meeting is held on the Tougaloo campus that night. The next day the NJYC and Tougaloo and high school students begin clandestinely distributing leaflets through Jackson's Black neighborhoods and to Blacks in Hinds, Madison, Rankin, and Yazoo counties. But the end of December, 15,000 flyers have been passed from hand to hand. The telephone tree is activated, speakers are assigned to address church meetings, and "undercover agents" (Black students posing as shoppers) patrol Capitol Street quietly informing out-of-area Black shoppers about the boycott.

Enough bail money is raised for a second team of pickets — Tougaloo students Dorie Ladner and Charles Bracey — to be busted on Capitol Street on December 21. That night, Klan nightriders fire into Hunter Bear's home narrowly missing his baby daughter. Armed guards are posted on the Tougaloo campus (Jackson 7).

At night somebody shot up our house. A bullet missed my daughter Maria, went through her crib, just barely missed her. There was no point depending on the Madison County Sheriff's office for anything other than trouble, and so a number of us stood armed guard on the Tougaloo campus, something which we were to do on a number of occasions. There were points where we even fired a shot or two, — in fact, we fired more than a few shots. But we didn't publicize that part of it Interview 9).

NY attorney William Kunstler (father of Tougaloo exchange student Karin Kunstler), Gandhi Fund lawyer Clarence Jones, and local Jackson attorney Jess Brown devise a new legal strategy. Pointing out the obvious fact that civil rights demonstrators cannot possibly receive a fair trial in segregated state courts that only allow whites to serve on juries, they petition to have the picket cases transferred to federal court under an old Reconstruction Era statute. The racist Federal Judge Harold Cox denies their petition and they appeal his ruling to the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. While the case is working its way through the judicial system, the pickets are free on bail and their trials are postponed. The removal petition eventually succeeds, setting a precedent for transferring civil rights cases from all over the South to federal court where they enter a legal limbo and are never brought to trial.

The Christmas boycott is surprisingly effective, honored by roughly 60% of the Black population. And once the pressure of providing Christmas gifts to children is past, the boycott gains strength as it continues into 1963. In tacit admission of the economic hardship being suffered by the white merchants, the City waives the annual property taxes for businesses being boycotted. But despite their economic losses, the white business owners refuse to negotiate with Blacks or make any changes in segregation. And the White Citizens Council stands ready to foreclose mortgages, stop supplies, and mobilize a white boycott against any merchant who wavers in steadfast support of segregation (Jackson 8-9).

Works cited:

“Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) Formed in Mississippi.”  Civil Rights Movement History 1962.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm

“Interview: Hunter Bear (John Salter).”  Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/nars/hunteri.htm

“Jackson MS Boycotts.”  Civil Rights Movement History 1962.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962jackson

“Mississippi Voter Registration – Greenwood.”  Civil Rights Movement History 1962.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962greenwood

“Sam Block.” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University.  Web.  https://snccdigital.org/people/sam-block/

“Willie Peacock.”  SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University.  Web.  https://snccdigital.org/people/willie-peacock/



Civil Rights Events

Mississippi 1962

James Meredith

 

James Meredith was born June 25, 1933, in Kosciusko, Mississippi. He was one of ten children of Roxy Patterson Meredith and Moses Cap, a poor farmer in Kosciusko. As a young child, Meredith became aware of racism. He would refuse the nickels and dimes that a local white man regularly gave to black children, calling the gifts degrading. More painful was the realization he made as a young man on a trip to visit relatives in Detroit, where he saw blacks and whites sharing the same public facilities. He rode the train home from this brush with integration, and when he arrived in Memphis, the conductor told him to leave the whites-only car. "I cried all the way home," Meredith later recalled, "and vowed to devote myself to changing the degrading conditions of black people." He also had other ambitions and goals. Ever since a childhood visit to a white doctor's office, he had harbored a dream of attending the University of Mississippi, the physician's alma mater.

 

After high school, in 1951, Meredith joined the U.S. Air Force. He rose to the rank of staff sergeant, earned credits toward a college degree, and served in the KOREAN WAR. Following his discharge in 1960, he attended the all-black Jackson State College, but the courses he wanted to take were offered only at the state university. As a 28-year-old, he followed with hopefulness the speeches of President John F. Kennedy, which promised greater enjoyment of opportunity for all U.S. citizens. Change was in the air, and many African Americans were heartened by the portents in Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address. On the same day that Kennedy became president, Meredith applied for admission to the University of Mississippi.

 

The school turned down his application. Mississippi still practiced SEGREGATION, and that meant that no African Americans could attend the all-white university. Even seven years after BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION, southern states resisted complying with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that compulsory segregation was unconstitutional. Knowing that he had a constitutional right that the state refused to recognize, Meredith turned to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. This arm of the civil rights organization, accustomed to fighting segregation cases, extended help to him. Meredith and his attorneys fought some 30 court actions against the state.

 

At last, a federal court ruled that a qualified student could not be denied admission on the ground of race. Meredith had won, but the court order infuriated segregationists. Playing to popular sentiment, Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett promised to stop Meredith. Barnett pressured the state legislature to give him authority over university admissions, a power that usually was exercised by the state college board (James 1-2).

 

In a TV address to the state, Governor Ross Barnett declares: "There is no case in history where the Caucasian race has survived social integration. We will not drink from the cup of genocide. ... We must either submit to the unlawful dictates of the federal government or stand up like men and tell them never! ... No school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor!" The state legislature and local officials across the state (all of them white, of course) echo and intensify his position.

 

 Meredith has no illusions. He later explains: "I was engaged in a war. I considered myself engaged in a war from day one. And my objective was to force the federal government — the Kennedy administration at that time — into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen." (James Integrates 1).

 

By September of 1962, the situation had escalated to the point where President John F. Kennedy had to get involved. While not overly concerned with civil rights before 1960, JFK had won his election largely thanks to African American support and was quickly taking a greater interest in desegregation. He sent Chief U.S. Marshal J.P. McShane to escort James Meredith into the school. Three times J.P. McShane and a small group of unarmed deputies tried to enroll Meredith at Ole Miss. Three times they were blocked by armed state troopers sent by Ross Barnett (James Enrollment 1).

 

Cars driven by whites parade through Mississippi towns with confederate flags waving and bumper stickers proclaiming: "The South shall rise again!" Retaliatory violence against Blacks flares across the state as Black men, women, and children are attacked, beaten, and shot at. Armed students are posted at Tougaloo to defend the campus from KKK nightriders. Despite the terror, Blacks are inspired by Meredith's courage and defiance. His struggle to integrate 'Ole Miss becomes a state-wide confrontation between whites intent on maintaining the old order of racial segregation and Blacks determined to be free and equal citizens (James Integrates 2).

 

In a series of telephone calls in late September 1962 President Kennedy tried to convince Governor Barnett to let James Meredith enter the campus to register for classes. … If Kennedy couldn't sway Barnett with words, he would have to use federal troops, a move that could provoke violence and cost Kennedy precious votes in the South.

 

The stand-off had a Civil War flavor. An old-style Southern Democrat, Ross Barnett declared that Mississippi segregation laws trumped Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. President Kennedy was also a Democrat, but a young, bred-in-the-bone Yankee from Massachusetts. Having won the presidency by a tiny margin, Kennedy needed the continued loyalty of Southern Democrats. But Barnett's repeated defiance of federal law forced JFK into a risky confrontation.

 

From September 15 to September 30, Bobby Kennedy and Ross Barnett had more than a dozen phone conversations.

 

Historian Bill Doyle, author of American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962, says that Ross Barnett knew integration was inevitable, but needed a way to let James Meredith into Ole' Miss without losing face with his white, pro-segregation supporters. "Ross Barnett desperately wanted the Kennedys to flood Mississippi with combat troops because that's the only way Ross Barnett could tell his white segregationist backers, 'Hey I did everything I could, I fought them, but to prevent bloodshed in the end I made a deal,'" Doyle says.

 

On September 27, 1962 Bobby Kennedy and Ross Barnett agreed on an extraordinary plan: James Meredith would arrive at the Ole' Miss campus in Oxford accompanied by at least 25 armed Federal Marshals (at the time, Marshals were Justice Department agents normally used to transport prisoners, not trained for combat). Ross Barnett would make a show of blocking Meredith, but be forced to step aside when the Marshals drew their guns.

 

Robert F. Kennedy: I will send the Marshals that I have available up there in Memphis and there will be about 25 or 30 of them and they will come with Mr. Meredith and they will arrive at wherever the gate is and I will have the head Marshal pull a gun and I will have the rest of them have their hands on their guns and their holsters. And then as I understand it, they will go through and get in and you will make sure that law and order is preserved and that no harm will be done to Mr. McShane and Mr. Meredith.

 

Ross Barnett: Oh, yes.

 

RFK: And then I think you will see that’s accomplished?

 

RB: …  I was under the impression that they were all going to pull their guns. This could be very embarrassing. We got a big crowd here and if one pulls his gun and we all turn it would be very embarrassing. Isn’t it possible to have them all pull their guns?

 

RFK: I hate to have them all draw their guns, as I think it could create harsh feelings. Isn't it sufficient if I have one man draw his gun and the others keep their hands on their holsters?

 

RB: They must all draw their guns. Then they should point their guns at us and then we could step aside. This could be very embarrassing down here for us. It is necessary.

 

By the end of the day, the Mississippi governor and the attorney general decided to scrap their plan because it was too dangerous. A mob had gotten word of Meredith's imminent arrival and had begun to descend on Oxford. Barnett and Kennedy feared the staged showdown would spark a riot.

 

When Bobby Kennedy could not get Governor Barnett to comply with the order of the Supreme Court, President Kennedy stepped in. On September 29 and 30, 1962, JFK had a series of conversations with Governor Barnett. He hoped to manage the crisis by telephone. Their first call took place at 2 p.m. on Friday, September 29.

 

President Kennedy apparently thought Barnett was a pushover. After the call, he turned to his brother and said, "You've been fighting a sofa pillow all week." But JFK was wrong. According to civil rights historian Taylor Branch, Ross Barnett had the president and attorney general wrapped around his finger.

 

“They're never sure whether he's making a fool of them or they're making a fool of him. But they know as the evenings go on, they feel less and less in control, so the suspicion starts to rise that maybe Barnett's making a fool of them."

 

While Barnett and Kennedy were secretly negotiating by phone, radio stations across the South were blaring bulletins about the situation. White racists were grabbing their guns and heading for Oxford.

 

Rather than send army troops to escort Meredith to Ole' Miss, President Kennedy dispatched scores of Federal Marshals to Mississippi - lightly armed men clad awkwardly in suits, ties and gas masks. At the same time, JFK wanted Ross Barnett to assure him that Mississippi patrolmen would help maintain law and order as the threat of a race riot on the university campus in Oxford grew.

 

Despite Governor Barnett's promise [that highway patrolmen would maintain order], he did not maintain order. Though he'd been privately negotiating with the White House, Barnett made a defiant speech at a Saturday night Ole' Miss football game. He was cheered on by some 40,000 fans.

 

The next day, September 30, 1962, hundreds of outraged protestors flooded Oxford to block Meredith's expected arrival. At 12:45 p.m., Bobby Kennedy made an angry call to Barnett. The attorney general warned that if Barnett didn't let Meredith register, President Kennedy would expose their secret telephone negotiations in a televised speech scheduled that evening.

 

The attorney general's threat worked. Barnett knew that if his segregationist supporters learned he had made a covert deal with the Kennedys, his political career would be over. So, to keep the secret, Barnett agreed to the Kennedy plan: get Meredith safely lodged on campus that evening so he could register for classes Monday morning.

 

On Sunday, September 30, 1962 at 6 p.m., James Meredith was escorted onto the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford by a convoy of Federal Marshals. While he got settled in one of the school dorms, more than 2,500 angry students and outside agitators swarmed around the main campus building, the Lyceum. President Kennedy was informed of Meredith's arrival and went on national television that night to announce this apparent victory and explain that it had been achieved without the use of federal soldiers. He reminded viewers that, "Americans are free, in short, to disagree with the law but not to disobey it." Kennedy continued: "For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law" (John 1-6).

 

White students surround Meredith's dorm and the registration office. They chant: "Two-four-one-three, we hate Kennedy! Kill the nigger-loving bastards!" Determined to lynch Meredith, armed Klansmen from around the state and as far away as Selma and Birmingham Alabama swarm into Oxford. The crowd, a volatile mixture of KKK, students, and townsmen, grows to more than 2,000. The mob is led by former Army Major-General Edwin Walker, who had been forced to retire when he refused to stop distributing racist hate literature to his soldiers. They attack the Marshals guarding Meredith with bricks, bottles, guns, and fire bombs. Mississippi state troopers charged with maintaining "law and order" disappear, leaving the Marshals to face the horde alone.

 

 

The Marshals desperately try to hold back the lynch mob with tear gas. Half of them are wounded, 30 of them are shot. The crowd lashes out at journalists — they murder French reporter Paul Guihard. A second man [a local jukebox repairman] is also killed under circumstances that remain unclear to this day. With tear gas running low and the raging horde closing in, the Marshals plea for reinforcements. President Kennedy calls up Troop E of the Mississippi National Guard, but only 67 men respond. Led by Captain "Chooky" Falkner (nephew of author William Faulkner) they try to rescue the Marshals and Meredith. They are not enough.

 

As the battle rages, Kennedy finally — at long last — sends in the United States Army to restore order. An officer later recalled:

 

“As we were marching up there, they would throw rocks at us and call us nigger lovers. Wanted to know if we were there to put our nigger brother in college. There was a lot of gasoline burning, a lot of automobiles burning on campus. Every concrete bench was broken, being thrown at us. I spent time in Vietnam. I'll take that any time over 'Ole Miss.”

 

To appease southern whites, Attorney General Robert Kennedy secretly orders that the units assigned to 'Ole Miss be re-segregated so that armed Black GIs won't be patrolling the streets of Oxford. Some 4,000 Black soldiers are humiliated, disarmed, removed from their units, and reassigned to KP and garbage duty. Black soldiers can be sent to fight and die in Vietnam, but they are not allowed to protect Black citizens in Mississippi from mob violence (James Integrates 3-5).

 

Though President Kennedy and Governor Barnett talked several more times, the rioting in Oxford forced both men to do what they wanted most to avoid: Barnett had to step aside without his valiant last stand, and Kennedy had to storm Mississippi with U.S. Army troops. (John 6-7).

 

Being for integration meant being on the wrong side of the powerful White Citizens' Councils, the Ku Klux Klan and the State Sovereignty Commission, a spy agency.

 

White professors on campus who supported Meredith's admission faced intimidation. Marleah Kaufman Hobbs' husband, a political science professor, got death threats. She was a fine arts grad student at the time. Now 89 years old, she remembers when the riots broke out.

 

"That night the cracking of the guns, the planes flying overhead bringing in more National Guard — we didn't sleep at all that night. It was the changing of the world," she says.

 

Bishop Duncan Gray Jr., then an Episcopal priest in Oxford, tried to squelch a mob that had gathered atop a Confederate monument on campus.

 

"Of course, they grabbed me and pulled me down. I'd been hit a few times before, but that's when I took the roughest beating," says Gray, who is white.

 

Gray says the night forever changed the dynamics in Mississippi's struggle to preserve white supremacy.

 

"It was a horrible thing, and I'm sorry we had to go through that, but it certainly marked a very definite turning point. And maybe a learning experience for some people," he says. "I think even the ardent segregationists didn't want to see violence like that again" (Elliott 1-2).

 

The French journalist Paul Guihard, on assignment for the London Daily Sketch … was found dead behind the Lyceum building with a gunshot wound to the back. One hundred-sixty US Marshals, one-third of the group, were injured in the melee, and 40 soldiers and National Guardsmen were wounded.

 

On Monday morning, October 1, 1962, Meredith walked across the battered campus and registered for classes.

 

The US government fined Barnett $10,000 and sentenced him to jail for contempt, but the charges were later dismissed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

 

Many students harassed Meredith during his two semesters on campus but others accepted him.

 

According to first-person accounts chronicled in Nadine Cohodas’ book The Band Played Dixie (1997), students living in Meredith’s dorm bounced basketballs on the floor just above his room through all hours of the night. Other students ostracized him: when Meredith walked into the cafeteria for meals, the students eating would turn their backs. If Meredith sat at a table with other students, all of whom were white, the students would immediately get up and go to another table (Denise 1-2).

 

Hunter Bear wrote: Meredith had a terrible time up there. Medgar [Evers] was on the phone constantly bolstering him. I was sitting in Medgar's office while he was doing that. Meredith was befriended by a few courageous white people on the campus, — notably Jim Silver of the History Department, who later became a very good friend of ours and wrote the book Mississippi, the Closed Society. (Interview 19).

 

When Meredith graduated from Ole Miss in August 1963 (with a BA in political science), he wore a segregationist's "Never" button upside down on his black gown.

 

He later wrote: “I noticed in the hallway a black janitor and I wondered why he was standing there. And he had a mop under his arm. And as I passed him, he turned his body, twisted his body, and touched me with the mop handle. Now this delivered a message, and the message was clear: ‘We are looking after you while you are here’" (James Integrates 6). 

 

Works cited:

 

Denise, Carletta.  “October 1, 1962: James Meredith Enters The University Of Mississippi.”  Black Then: Discovering Our History.  October 1, 2018.  Web.  https://blackthen.com/%E2%80%8Boctober-1-1962-james-meredith-enters-the-university-of-mississippi/

 

Elliott, Debbie.  “Integrating Ole Miss: A Transformative, Deadly Riot.”  NPR.  October 1, 2012.  Web.  https://www.npr.org/2012/10/01/161573289/integrating-ole-miss-a-transformative-deadly-riot

 

“Interview: Hunter Bear (John Salter).”  Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/nars/hunteri.htm

“James Howard Meredith - Further Readings.”  University of Mississippi Free Legal Encyclopedia.  Web.  http://law.jrank.org/pages/8541/Meredith-James-Howard.html

 

“James Meredith Integrates 'Ole Miss (Sept-Oct).”  Civil Rights Movement History 1962.  Web.  https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962jackson

 

“James Meredith's Enrollment in Ole Miss: Riot & Reaction.”  Study.com.  Web.  https://study.com/academy/lesson/james-merediths-enrollment-in-ole-miss-riot-reaction.html

 

“John F. Kennedy: The Mississippi Crisis.”  American Public Media.  Web.  http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/a5.html