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/