Civil Rights Events
Mississippi 1962
Diane Nash Defies Court Sentence
By 1962 the Freedom Movement fight
against segregation is slowly grinding to a halt. Two years of sit-ins
have managed to desegregate some public facilities in some college-towns of the
Mid- and Upper-South, and after the Freedom Rides
all bus terminals serving interstate commerce are now no longer
segregated — in theory. But across the region most public facilities remain segregated by local law and the
very few Afro-Americans who dare sit at the front of a bus still face both
vigilante violence and likely arrest on trumped up charges of "disorderly
conduct" or "disturbing the peace." And by 1962 most student
integration campaigns in the Deep South have
been crushed by intensified
police repression and Klan terrorism. In Albany
Georgia, for example, public facilities are still segregated despite
a powerful SNCC-organized movement with deep support in the Afro-American
community and mass marches led by Dr. King resulting in over 750 arrests.
It is 100 years since the Civil War
(or the "War of Northern Aggression" as some southern politicians
refer to it). The years 1960 to 1965 mark the centennial of that war. On the
national level, Centennial programs and ceremonies are conducted with maximum
deference to the sensitivities of southern whites and little mention of slavery
as the conflict's defining issue. Nor is there much acknowledgement of Black
suffering under ante- bellum slavery, or Reconstruction, or the realities of
ongoing segregation and denial of basic human rights in the current-day South
of the 1960s. And in the South itself, commemorations glorify the "lost
cause," exalt the sanctity and purity of white womanhood, and praise the
"southern way of life" and its defenders such as the White Citizens
Councils and the Ku Klux Klan.
During the 1960 presidential campaign,
John F. Kennedy assured Afro-American voters and northern liberals that he
would address equality of opportunity with the "stroke of the president's pen." But once in office JFK's
priority is foreign affairs and Cold War anti-communism. Unwilling to offend
southern segregationists in Congress who he needs for his military and
diplomatic initiatives, JFK offers little public support for the student
sit-ins and minimal federal action in defense of Black voting rights.
When forced by public pressure to take
action against mob violence during the Freedom Rides and the Meredith-'Ole
Miss crises, Kennedy's assertion of federal authority is reluctant
and tepid. Civil rights supporters and northern liberals press him to enact new
civil rights legislation but he declines, arguing that there is no chance at
all of doing so in the 87th Congress (1961-1962) against the united and adamant
opposition of the Southern Bloc of Senators. And as a practical politician he
knows that no Democrat can be elected president — or
reelected — without the political support of the "Solid South"
(Campaign 1).
By the fall of 1961, a year and a half
of nonviolent sit-in and freedom ride campaigns by SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP
have managed to desegregate some public facilities in some college-towns of the
Mid- and Upper-South. But in the Deep South states of Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, direct action campaigns have been brought
to a standstill by legal assaults, mass arrests and police brutality — at least
for the moment.
Following SNCC's decision to pursue
both direct action and voter registration, in the fall of '61 Diane Nash, James
Bevel (the two of them newly married), Bernard Lafayette, Paul Brooks, and
other direct action proponents begin organizing a "Move On Mississippi" (MOM) campaign in Jackson. With its large Afro-American
population and two Black colleges they hope to build a nonviolent student-led
protest movement that can both challenge segregation and register voters as was
done in Nashville.
But Mississippi
is not Tennessee.
Fear lays heavy over the Afro-American community and it's tough going. Half a
year earlier, the Tougaloo Nine, had been immediately arrested for the
"crime" of trying to read in the white-only public library. When Jackson State College students attempted to hold
a support vigil and march they were brutally dispersed by club-swinging police
using tear gas and attack-dogs — as were adult supporters outside the
courthouse when the nine were arraigned. The arrival of the Freedom Riders in
May inspired the community with hope, but after the riders were incarcerated in
the notorious Parchman Prison the state's lesson regarding the price of protest
was not lost on Jackson's
Black community.
Nevertheless the MOM organizers dig in
and begin holding workshops for Black students on nonviolent strategies and
tactics. But before they have a chance to mount their first protest the Jackson police hit them
with a preemptive strike. Nash, Bevel, and Lafayette are arrested on felony
charges of "Contributing to the Delinquency of Minors." Though the students
attending the seminars have not violated any laws the city prosecutor claims
that merely teaching them about nonviolent resistance constitutes
"contributing" to their future "delinquency" — a
police-state legal ploy that utterly tramples underfoot the First Amendment
right of freedom of speech and association
.
The felony charges come with high bail
amounts that SNCC can ill-afford. If they or others continue teaching
nonviolent resistance they'll be arrested again and have to sit in jail
awaiting trial and appeal — a lengthy process. As a practical matter, the
arrests stifle MOM's effort to build a direct action movement in Jackson.
In municipal court the three are quickly
convicted on the "contributing" charges. In addition to $2,000 fines
(equal to $16,000 each in 2016) Bernard and James are sentenced to three years
in prison, Diane to two years. They remain free on bond while their convictions
are appealed. But under the legal rules they first have to appeal up through
the various levels of Mississippi
courts — all of which will certainly ignore the unconstitutionality of their
arrest and conviction. Only after the state Supreme Court rejects their appeal
(as everyone knows it will) can they appeal to federal court where, after more
time-consuming and costly hearings at various levels they expect that the
charges will be dismissed on constitutional grounds. The Mississippi
authorities know the convictions will eventually be overturned in federal
court, but meanwhile they prevent SNCC workers from organizing protests in Jackson — perhaps for
years if the court proceedings can be strung out long enough.
Late in April of 1962, Diane declares
that her commitment to nonviolence precludes any further cooperation with the
biased and corrupt Mississippi
judicial system. Though she is pregnant with her and Bevel's first child, she
withdraws her appeal and appears before the sentencing judge to turn herself in
and begin serving her two-year prison sentence.
“To appeal further would necessitate my sitting through
another trial in a Mississippi
court, and I have reached the conclusion that I can no longer cooperate with
the evil and unjust court system of this state. I subscribe to the philosophy
of nonviolence; this is one of the basic tenets of nonviolence — that
you refuse to cooperate with evil. The only condition under which I will leave
jail will be if the unjust and untrue charges against me are completely
dropped.
“The southern courts in which we are being tried are completely corrupt. ...
The immorality of these courts involves several factors. They are completely
lacking in integrity because we are being arrested and tried on charges that
have nothing to do with the real issues. The real reason we are arrested is
that we are opposing segregation, but the courts are not honest enough to state
this frankly and charge us with this. Instead they hide behind phony
charges — breach of peace in
Jackson, criminal anarchy
in
Louisiana,
conspiracy to violate trespass laws in
Talledega,
Alabama.
“But over and above the immorality of cooperating with this evil court
system, there is an even larger reason why we must begin to stay in jail. If we
do
not do so, we lose our opportunity to reach the community and society
with a great moral appeal and thus bring about
basic change in people
and in society.
“[My child] will be a black child born in
Mississippi and thus wherever he is born he
will be in prison. I believe that if I go to jail now it may help hasten that
day when my child and all children will be free — not only on the day
of their birth but for all of their lives.”
Meanwhile, Bevel and Bernard continue
their appeal so as to overturn the legal fiction that teaching nonviolence to
students amounts to a form of contributing to their delinquency.
The bold defiance of Diane Nash places
the authorities in an uncomfortable position. The municipal court convictions
and prison sentences were accomplished with little notice by the press and
appeals through the state judiciary are unlikely to attract much media
attention. But incarcerating a young mother-to-be in state prison on bogus
"contributing" charges that are utterly without legal merit risks a
national publicity backlash of exactly the kind that the Freedom Movement is proving
itself adept at provoking (Diane 1-3).
“When I surrendered, I
sat in the front seat of the courtroom and the bailiff told me to move back and
I thought ‘I [might be here] for two years, I’m not moving anywhere,’” she
says. “So they charged me with contempt of court for refusing to move to the
back.”
The contempt of court
sentence lasted for 10 days. While in jail, the only thing on Nash’s mind was
her unborn child. She was determined to do everything she could so that her
child would enter a world that was equal for all Americans, regardless of race.
After serving out her
sentence for contempt, the judge declined to hear Nash’s other case. Nash believes
the federal government tapped her telephone line and listened in when she told
organizations in the Civil Rights Movement that she was pregnant and headed to
jail for up to two years. On the heels of the horrific imagery of the bloodied
and beaten Freedom Riders that had been spread far and wide, they surmised that
Mississippi didn’t want to find itself, once again, at the center of a national
political debate.
As a result, the
government reduced Nash’s sentence for “contributing to the delinquency of
minors” without formally addressing it. This left Nash in a predicament. She
didn’t want the prejudiced justice system she had been fighting against to
think that she was indebted to it. She was ready and willing to serve her full
sentence, after all.
“When I got home, I
wrote Judge Moore a certified return-receipt letter. I said, ‘In case you
should change your mind and you want me, here’s where you can reach me,’” Nash
recalls. And though the judge never took her up on the offer, Nash was always ready
to do what was necessary to make a mark. To change the world, she says with a
laugh, “sometimes you have to be bad” (Morgan 7-9).
The Bevel’s daughter
Sherrilynn is born later that year while her parents continue their Freedom
Movement organizing in the Deep South, her mother with SNCC and her father with
SCLC — soon they will be in Birmingham
leading a decisive direct action campaign against segregation. Bernard
Lafayette marries NAACP youth leader Colia Lidell and together they move into
Selma, Alabama, where they begin organizing what eventually becomes the Selma
Voting Rights Campaign and The March to Montgomery, the capstone voting-rights
campaign of the 1960s. And that fall, a few months after Diane forces
Mississippi to suspend her sentence, students working with the North Jackson
NAACP Youth Council pick up the direct action torch by first organizing a Black
boycott of the Jackson State Fair and then a Christmas boycott of the city's
white merchants (Diane 4).
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