Civil Rights Events

Meredith March against Fear

Completion, Assessment

Access this map to follow the direction of the Meredith March. https://www.crmvet.org/docs/mmm_map.htm

On Saturday, June 25, freedom marchers from all over the nation begin arriving at Tougaloo College for Sunday's final leg to the Capitol building. Tougaloo is a small private school founded after the Civil War by the American Missionary Association. It's a beacon of hope for Mississippi Afro-Americans and one of the very few Historically Black Colleges and Universities to courageously stand with the Freedom Movement. Students expelled from other colleges because of their civil rights activity are made welcome there and the campus has long been a center of activism, research, and education.

…

All through the day protesters arriving by car, bus, train and plane settle in at Tougaloo for the morrow's march while discussions and debates over Black Power, nonviolence, and the role of whites continue unabated. Those with tear gas residue still on their skin and clothes from the Canton attack finally get to use showers in the gym and the campus laundry. Entrepreneurs peddle pins and pennants and SNCC militants affix "We're the Greatest" bumper stickers to parked cars.

As was the case with the last night of the Selma to Montgomery March, Harry Belafonte pulls together a star-studded concert-rally on the college football field. Thousands from Jackson's Afro-American community are blocked from approaching the campus by Hinds County sheriffs but many others make it through and almost 10,000 cheer Sammy Davis, Rafer Johnson, and stars of stage and screen. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, shouts "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud!" When he's told that Brown's about to perform, Dr. King bolts from interminable discussions between SCLC, SNCC, and CORE staff over who will pay for this or that, saying, "I'm sorry y'all, James Brown is on. I'm gone."

… If the hoped-for target of 10,000 protesters is to be reached, the bulk of them will have to come from Jackson's Afro-American community. Nightly mass meetings are being held, and working out of temporary offices at Pratt Memorial Methodist Church, a broad coalition of Jackson groups is mobilizing supporters to open their homes to feed, house, and ferry out-of-town marchers, raise funds and donate goods, and above all join the march as it moves through the city after church services.

Sunday morning, June 26, is sun-bright and heavy with muggy heat as the marchers begin forming up on the Tougaloo Campus at the gate. MCHR medical volunteers hand out sunblock and salt tablets. An hour before noon, thousands step off onto County Line Road for the final stretch of the Meredith Mississippi March Against Fear. Led by Meredith, McKissick, Carmichael and King, they soon turn south on Highway-51 headed for the heart of Jackson and the Mississippi Capitol building.

Bruce Hartford observed:

No longer were we marching on the edge of the road, now we had a permit and we filled the lanes. At first we were mostly marching through Afro-American neighborhoods where local Black folk waved, cheered, and handed out glasses of cool water and cold lemonade while our numbers steadily grew. The hot sun beat down out of a cloudless sky and it was so sweltering hot and muggy it felt like we were in a sauna. The heat was making me woozy. I'd endured hot days in Alabama but this was way worse — maybe because of lack of sleep and tension or perhaps residual effects of the tear gas. I felt like I might pass out and the salt tablets weren't helping.

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At eight designated spots in Black neighborhoods, throngs of Afro-Americans in their Sunday church clothes wait impatiently to join the march as it proceeds down State Street (US-51). A brass band serenades one group as they share glasses of cool lemonade and cans of cold beer. The line of 5000 or so who march out of Tougaloo before noon doubles and then continues to swell as Black folk watching from the sidewalk step off the curb and into the line.

A law-enforcement army has been mobilized in handle the march. Almost all of the 300 State Troopers are on duty, as are 450 police from various jurisdictions and most of the Jackson city cops. … their hostility is palpable.

…

In a reflection of the white power-structure's split between hardline segregationists and business-oriented moderates, Jackson's mayor, the city's main newspaper and even the Jackson Citizens Council all call for calm. Governor Johnson urges whites to ignore the march, saying, "They will inflict their hate and hostility on other Americans as they sow strife and discord across this nation, which needs to be united behind the brave men who are following our flag in Vietnam."

For their part, die-hard segregationists work to foment opposition to the march, calling on "all southern Christian people to fly their Confederate flags." As a white-supremacist explains to a reporter for Britain's Guardian newspaper: the Civil Rights Movement is run by Communists, puts millions in Martin Luther King's pocket, lies about Black people (who have equal rights, but are too lazy to hold steady jobs), and itself orchestrated the shooting of James Meredith for publicity purposes.

As the marchers continue down State Street towards the downtown business district they pass through a neighborhood of poor and working class whites. Here they are met with hostile crowds shrieking hate and waving Confederate battle flags. "I don't like the niggers, they stink," one racist tells a reporter as others spit at the marchers and give them the finger. White freedom marchers, and particularly white women, are the targets of particular rage with shouted epithets of "nigger-lover," "whore," and sexually explicit jeers about white women and black power.

… by some SNCC and CORE militants who have now turned against nonviolence, a fraction [of the marchers] returns insult for insult, hostility for hostility, and mockery for mockery. In some instances Black marchers dart out of the line to grab a "Stars and Bars" flag from white hands and trample it underfoot or later set it afire at the Capitol. Only when punches start being thrown do the police intervene to break up incipient brawls.

…

There are no objective or reliable estimates for march size. … It's clear, though, that the march represents a massive, overwhelming rejection of Mississippi's racial order. And to white Mississippians it's a stunning repudiation of the oft-quoted claim that other than a few outsiders and malcontents the state's "Nigrahs are happy and content with the way things are."

As the Meredith Marchers in their thousands flow into an eerily empty downtown business district, NAACP activists hand out small American flags as visible rejection of the Confederate emblems still flying from state flagpoles and being waved by hate-shouting racists. A small handful of SNCC militants urge Afro-Americans not to carry the flags, telling them "Those flags don't represent you," but most marchers eagerly take them. In years gone past when protesters had carried U.S. flags the Jackson cops had ripped them from their hands as if to claim that Blacks — even war veterans — had no right to assert themselves as American citizens. Out-of-town supporters also take the flags. One of them is Japanese-American marcher William Hohri who had been imprisoned for years in the Manzanar internment camp as an "enemy alien" during World War II. He later tells an interviewer, "It was the first time in my life that I felt proud to be an American."

A massive police presence surrounds the Mississippi Capitol building. From the moment James Meredith stepped off from the Peabody Hotel in Memphis on June 5th a rally on the Capitol steps had been the goal. But even more so than county courthouses, whites consider the Capitol their sacred ground — a symbol of their supremacy, never to be profaned by Black protesters. Governors are inaugurated on its front steps, ceremonies of white pride and power take place in its halls, and on the expansive tree-shaded plaza in front of the steps stands a large Monument to Women of the Confederacy dedicated to "Our Mothers, Our Wives, Our Sisters, and Our Daughters." For whites, it's unthinkable that Afro-Americans who refuse to acknowledge their "proper place" be allowed to "defile" this monument to sacred white womanhood (though, of course, as is the case with all the other Confederate memorials Black hands regularly clean and maintain it).

But now the white power-structure is in a bind. Their white constituents want the Capitol "protected" from the presence of defiant Blacks, but if they arrest thousands of peaceful marchers … in the glare of national publicity they'll be exposed as the racists that they are, a huge black eye for the state. More importantly, as a practical matter they don't have any place to incarcerate so many prisoners — not even the fairground buildings are big enough — nor do they have funds to feed them.

White constituents demand that tear gas and billy clubs be used to drive protesters from the Capitol grounds — as had been done with the vastly smaller number of demonstrators on the Canton schoolyard. But in Canton the marchers were dispersed into the surrounding Afro-American community, in Jackson 15,000 furious Blacks would be driven into a downtown business district filled with department, jewelry, and liquor stores, big plate-glass windows, and buildings filled with flammable merchandise. A Watts-type spasm of urban arson and looting almost certainly would result — to the intense displeasure of powerful white business leaders.

Freedom Movement leaders are also caught in the mirror image of that same bind. The Meredith Marchers are determined to finish the march at the Capitol and they're in no mood to obey an illegal, unconstitutional limitation on their political right to peaceably assemble and demand redress of grievances. But SCLC, CORE, and SNCC are all flat broke and deeply in debt from the costs already incurred by the march. There's no money to bail out hundreds of arrestees, let-alone thousands or tens of thousands.

If the cops attack the march and disperse the throng into downtown they know there's no hope whatsoever of maintaining nonviolent discipline. When looting and arson break out there's no doubt in anyone's mind that the cops will open fire with all the weapons at their command. Dozens will be killed, hundreds wounded. Hundreds more will be arrested for violent felonies, be tried by all-white juries, and face long prison sentences. And, of course, there will be enormous negative political repercussions if a nonviolent demonstration turns into a violent urban riot — regardless of the provocation.

So a compromise is worked out by Afro-American leaders and white officials. The new "no-protests" law is quietly shelved and not enforced. The marchers are issued a permit to rally on the large Capitol parking lot next to the building. In other words, "at" the Capitol but not on the steps where governors are inaugurated. Nor will marchers be allowed to touch the actual structure itself or approach the white womanhood statue.

The power-structure saves face with white voters by assuring them that "we're gonna make the niggers use the back door." Black leaders stress that the basic demands of a Capitol rally and elimination of the "no-protests" law have been won. Some of the super-militants condemn the compromise and urge marchers to breach the police line around the building but few support them and no attempts to break through the cordon are made.

The throng of marchers flow into the parking lot, crowding thick around a stage improvised from a flatbed truck. Some climb trees for a better view, others flop down to the ground, exhausted by the long hike and enervated by the heat. There is no money for an adequate sound system and only those nearest the truck can hear the speakers. And in contrast to the 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 rally at the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery the TV networks give scant coverage to the march and choose not to broadcast any of the speeches.

As is customary for march rallies there are many speakers — far too many in the opinion of some in the audience. Among them, Stokely outlines what he sees as the essence of Black Power: ""We have to stop being ashamed of being black! We have to move to a position where we can feel strength and unity amongst each other from Watts to Harlem, where we won't ever be afraid! And the last thing we have to do is build a power base so strong in this country that it will bring them to their knees every time they mess with us!"

Dr. King refers to his famous I Have a Dream speech, telling the marchers that he's "watched my dreams turn into a nightmare." In a foretelling of the Poor Peoples Campaign to come he speaks of the stark poverty and devastating deprivation in the midst of plenty that he's observed on the march and avows that "I still have a dream this afternoon, a dream that includes integrated schools and an end to "rat-infested slums, a dream that Blacks and whites will live side by side in decent housing, and that "the empty stomachs of Mississippi will be filled" (Marching 1-10).

What valid conclusions can we, the reading public, make about the effects of the Meredith March Against Fear?

Thousands — probably more than 15,000 — Black Mississippians defy generations of intimidation to participate in what becomes the largest protest in the state's history. Local freedom movements in places like Greenwood, Neshoba County, and Canton are re-energized and new ones erupt in Grenada and Yazoo City. While widespread white terrorism continues for some time, 1966 marks the beginning of its eventual decline. And as had been so often been the case before, the Meredith March proves yet again that courage is contagious.

… the white-owned northern mass media pays scant attention, focusing instead on hyping internal divisions and reflecting their own fears and political assumptions about "Black racism" and "Black Power." Shaped and influenced by that mass media, northern public opinion fails to force Washington into action. The Civil Rights Act of 1966 is defeated, and federal government efforts to defend the human and constitution rights of Afro-Americans in the Deep South remains sluggish and half-hearted.

…

While laws and court rulings played significant roles, what ultimately ended legally-enforced segregation and race-based denial of voting rights in the South was the refusal of Afro-Americans to put up with it any longer. Civil rights laws and court rulings had been on the books for decades, but it took individual acts of courage and defiance developing into a mass peoples movement to actually implement and enforce those rules at the local level. All the marches and protests of the era — including the Meredith March — influenced individual Blacks, Afro-American communities, and some southern whites to decisively reject the ways of the past. And taken as a whole, the nonviolent demonstrations across the South prodded Washington into enforcing existing federal law, and convinced the nation to enact newer and more effective legislation. The Meredith March was part of that whole and cannot be assessed separate from it.

For generations, violent terrorism and economic subjugation had suppressed the fundamental human aspirations of nonwhite people. The Freedom Movement as a whole, including the Meredith March, provided the knowledge and tools that people of color used to educate and organize themselves for effective resistance. And where once the oppression inherent in the southern way of life flourished in obscurity, mass protests like the Meredith March broke down both the sense of isolation that discouraged hope and opened up access to allies and support that were vital to the success of local community struggles.

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Most famously, the Meredith March raised the slogan and concept of "Black Power." Nine months before the Meredith March, the Voting Rights Act had been enacted into law and then slowly began to take effect. Which raised the question of what to do with the ballot once it was achieved? As Courtland Cox of SNCC put it, "The vote is necessary, but not sufficient." The MFDP, political organizations independent of the Democratic Party, freedom labor unions, economic coops, the Poor Peoples Campaign, and Black Power were all efforts to answer the question of, "where do we go from here?"

…

The Meredith March also illustrated the realities and frustrations of exercising Afro-American political power. In the Jim Crow South as it had existed since Reconstruction, white power over Afro-Americans was absolute. It ruled by fiat and dictate without compromise. As Blacks gained the ballot and began demanding political and economic power of their own, white power did not evaporate or disappear. The confrontations in Canton and the maneuvering in Jackson over the Capitol building showed that whites could no longer ignore Afro-American demands and interests — they had to negotiate and compromise, which they hated. But Blacks were not in a position to assume the absolute power that whites had held for so long, they too had to negotiate and compromise which frustrated and embittered some activists. Yet in a democracy, absolute power is an aberration, in the long run the exercise of real political power requires negotiation, maneuver, alliances, and balance (Assessing 1-4).

Here are some of the assessments made by historian Aram Goudsouzian, the chair of the history department at the University of Memphis and author of Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear.

The march is an extraordinary story, full of dramatic moments, both uplifting and chilling—including the shooting of James Meredith, the voter registration of a 106-year-old man who had been born a slave, Stokely Carmichael’s unveiling of the slogan “Black Power,” a mob attack in the town of Philadelphia, soaring oratory from Martin Luther King, a brutal tear gassing in Canton, and a climactic 15,000-person march through the streets of Jackson, the largest civil-rights demonstration in Mississippi history.

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Black communities in small Mississippi towns served the marchers food and lent them land, while local leaders helped coordinate voter registration rallies. The improvised response showed the flexibility of the march’s leaders, who worked together despite their ideological differences. More important, it illustrated that the foundation of the civil-rights movement was the “ordinary” black people—men, women, and children—who sacrificed to serve a greater cause.

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The Meredith March revealed Martin Luther King at his finest, even as it tested him like never before. He was simultaneously planning an ambitious campaign in Chicago, where he hoped to apply nonviolent tactics to tackle racial barriers in a large Northern city, and serving as the central figure in this three-week march through Mississippi. He was the voice of moderation, balancing the militant impulses of the young radicals, offering statements that framed their quest as a noble ideal that reaffirmed American democracy. But he also spoke to the militants. During the walk through Mississippi, many activists had a chance to meet him and appreciate his character.

Without King, the march would have attracted much less attention from the national media and law enforcement. Moreover, black Mississippians flocked to the demonstration for the opportunity to see King, to hear him, to touch him.

The Meredith March changed King, too. For all the terror he had witnessed in his life, the state of Mississippi in 1966 exposed him to the depths of racist hatred. He later saw that same hate in Chicago, and it molded his evolving radicalism in the last years of his life. Just as important, he encountered people in Mississippi suffering from deep poverty. That experience shaped his vision for what became the Poor People’s Campaign, which compelled him to revisit Memphis in 1968, when he met his end.

Black Power grew out of the civil-rights movement, even as it challenged some of the principles embodied by figures such as Martin Luther King. It reflected existing frustrations about how, despite the passage of civil rights laws, nothing had changed in black people’s daily lives, whether in the South or the North. Black Power, as Carmichael defined it at the time, was about creating unified, independent blocs of black voters, whether in the South Side of Chicago or the Mississippi Delta. It also meant taking pride in black history and culture, while recognizing the linked experiences of dark-skinned people across the globe.

Carmichael turned just twenty-five years old on the Meredith March, and he had just become chairman of SNCC. He was always charismatic and dynamic, but the march transformed him into a national celebrity—an heir of sorts to Malcolm X. He refused to soothe white anxieties, instead addressing the aspirations and anger of many African Americans. He served, by the end of the march, as a human embodiment of Black Power. The media gravitated to him and the slogan, which intensified the devotion of militants, the unease of liberals, and the hatred of conservatives. 7

It was an end because it was the last great march of the civil-rights era. It was the last time the nation would see a coalition of black political organizations launch a sustained mass protest that captured the world’s attention and stimulated debates about black freedom.

It was a beginning because it was the birth of Black Power. Those ideas had been circulating and percolating, but the Meredith March identified it, gave it strength and attention, and built a sense of an emerging movement. When the Black Panthers formed in Oakland later that year, they could embrace the principles and style of Black Power. As a political and cultural movement, it helped define the era that followed.

Most important, though, is that the march was part of a long continuum. Black people were fighting for civil and human rights long before Martin Luther King ever led a bus boycott, and they continued well after he came to Memphis to help some striking garbagemen. It continues now. For those who are interested in creating a better world, the Meredith March can offer both positive and negative lessons (Risen 2, 4-8).

And what of James Meredith? Historian Aram Goudsouzian made this assessment.

James Meredith wanted a “walk” to Jackson, not a “march.” A march involved lots of people, including women and children, engaged in a mass protest. Meredith’s walk was for him and other independent men. He did not wish to endanger or inconvenience black Mississippians. After he was shot, the demonstration grew huge. It also imposed on local communities, veered from his planned route down Highway 51, and featured public debates about black politics. Meredith was furious! From his hospital bed in Memphis, and then while he recuperated in New York, he kept registering his distaste. He returned to Mississippi for the march’s final days, but even then he followed his own course: he abandoned a meeting of march leaders and led his own walk down Highway 51 from Canton to Tougaloo College, following his original plan.

Meredith may be the least understood figure in the American civil-rights movement. He had grandiose visions of destroying the entire system of white supremacy, but he had a strong independent streak, a deep respect for military order, and a traditional sense of manhood. He was a true conservative, in one sense, but he possessed a mystical sense of his destiny to change the world (Risen 3).

Interviewed in 2016, Meredith considered the effort a “total success” in terms of the goal to “change the whole direction” of the movement. Still, the coming of organized (and competing) Civil Rights groups did change the concept of what had started out as a solitary action. “‘Blacks were too scared to do anything, but they came out to greet James Meredith’: That would have been the story in the evening news if I hadn’t gotten myself shot,” he said. “But I got shot and that allowed the movement protest thing to take over then and do their thing” (Waxman 2).

Not to be overlooked, in November 1966, Aubrey Norvell pleaded guilty to assault and battery and was sentenced to two years in prison.

Works cited:

“Assessing the Meredith March.” Meredith Mississippi March and Black Power (June). Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (Jan-June). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis66.htm#1966mmaf

“Marching on Jackson, June 25-26.” Meredith Mississippi March and Black Power (June). Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (Jan-June). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis66.htm#1966mmaf

Risen, Clay. “The Birth of Black Power.” Chapter 16: A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby. June 2, 2016. Web. https://chapter16.org/the-birth-of-black-power/

Waxman, Olivia B. “James Meredith on What Today's Activism Is Missing.” Time. June 6, 2016. Web. http://time.com/4356404/james-meredith-50th-anniversary-march-against-fear/

Civil Rights Events

Meredith March against Fear

Canton, Return to Philadelphia

Access this map to follow the direction of the Meredith March. https://www.crmvet.org/docs/mmm_map.htm

On Thursday the 23rd, the Meredith marchers leave Benton and head east on Route 16 for the long 20 mile slog to Canton, the seat of Madison County. Still seething over the brutality in Philadelphia, as they trek across Yazoo County they share a fierce determination to defy violent racists by refusing to back down one inch when threatened by the forces of white-supremacy.

Madison County is 70% Afro-American. Like the Delta counties, most of its Black population are poor laborers, croppers, maids and menials who eke out an existence in grinding poverty. Whites make up less than a third of the population, but through denial of Black voting rights and organizations like the White Citizens Council they still maintain complete control of the political apparatus and they use their white power to keep wages low and working conditions abysmal. Almost 40% of the land is owned by Blacks, but rampant discrimination by the Department of Agriculture which denies them the crucial cotton allotments and federal subsidies that enrich white landowners, and other forms of economic domination by whites has kept Afro-American farmers mired in systemic poverty.

Canton, population 10,000, is the seat of Madison County. Some 60% of its inhabitants are Black and for years both town and county have been centers of CORE organizing. Though it's a racist stronghold, local leaders like C.O. Chinn, Annie Devine, and James McRee, aided by CORE field secretaries like George Raymond, Anne Moody, and Flukie Suarez have built a solid base of Freedom Movement support. When CORE began organizing there in 1963, almost 97% of whites were registered to vote but only 121 Afro-Americans were on the voting roles. Now, significantly, Black voters outnumber white voters in Madison County by 6000 to 5000. In addition to voter registration, the Madison County Movement has fought for school desegregation, mounted an effective economic boycott against white-owned stores, defended the rights of welfare recipients, and established an early childhood education center (Canton 1).

The movement in Madison County relied on the leadership of several key persons. C. O. Chinn, a local business owner known for his fearlessness, provided his store as a space for meetings and protected other activists from violent attacks. George Raymond, a former freedom rider from New Orleans, provided much of the strategy for the Canton movement, serving as the only staff member when the first CORE office opened in the county in 1963. Anne Moody, a Tougaloo College graduate later known for her memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, spent Freedom Summer 1964 in Canton. Annie Devine, a well-respected teacher and insurance saleswoman who was intimately familiar with the workings of both Canton’s black and white communities, provided essential leadership and later served as a member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention (Walton 3).

By afternoon, hundreds of Madison County Afro-Americans, many of them now registered voters, are joining the march in the sweltering heat as it crosses over the Big Black River and approaches the outskirts of Canton. It's just two days past the summer solstice, the sun rises at 6am and doesn't set until after 8pm, and it beats down on the weary marchers for 14 solid hours.

McNeal Elementary School for Negroes is in the heart of Canton's Black community. Annie Devine asks the school board for permission to set up camp on its playground. School is out of session for the summer and at first the board makes no objection. Then they equivocate. Then they say the field is only for "school-sponsored events."

Despite the board's rejection, Local leader C.O. Chinn and Hosea Williams of SCLC proclaim that since Jim Crow schools are paid for by Afro-American taxes all they need is permission from the surrounding Black community which they clearly have. "This is our ground," says Chinn. "We're going to put up the tents or else. We're tired of being pushed around by white folks."

The cops arrest Chinn, Williams, George Greene of SNCC, three white and five Black marchers — one of whom is beaten, kicked, and called "nigger boy" by the sheriff.

Late in the afternoon, a long line of singing marchers parades through town to the courthouse where a big crowd of 1500 local Afro-Americans greet them. They triumphantly surge on to the lawn — long forbidden to Black feet — for a rally. Stokely tells them, "They said we couldn't pitch our tents on our Black school. Well, we're going to do it now!"

As they proceed through the Afro-American community towards McNeal School, more and more Afro-Americans join them. The dirt school yard is only partially fenced and no police block the way as more than 3500 people simply walk on to the grounds like a flowing river. But off to one side lurk a large posse of lawmen from different jurisdictions in their various uniforms. They're all equipped with helmets and those who aren't carrying rifles and shotguns grip long billy clubs in their gloved hands.

By now it's 7:30, a half-hour before sunset. A big U-Haul truck arrives to drop off the tents and people are asked to surround it so the tents can't be seized by the cops. A caravan of Highway Patrol cars pull up in a cloud of dust to unload a company of more than 75 Troopers in full riot gear. They assemble in battle formation upwind of where the tents are being unloaded and begin doning their black gas masks.

March leaders climb onto the top of the truck and speak through a bullhorn. When King speaks it's clear that he assumes the police intend to arrest people for trespass as had happened to Chinn, Williams and the others earlier that day. "We're gonna stick together. If necessary, we are willing to fill up all the jails in Mississippi. And I don't believe they have enough jails to hold all the people!"

"The time for anybody running has come to an end!" shouts Stokely from atop the truck. "You tell them white folk in Mississippi that all the scared niggers are dead! You tell 'em they shot all the rabbits — they gonna deal with the men!"

Many of the local supporters cautiously retreat off the field, but 2,000 or more defiantly remain — as do all of the Meredith Marchers. "Pitch the tents!" chant militant activists circulating through the crowd around the truck. "Pitch the tents! Pitch the tents!"

SCLC’s Bruce Hartford narrated what followed.

Without any warning at all or order from the police to disperse there came the loud sounds of Pop! Pop! Pop! Burning, stinging gas was everywhere. A white cloud enveloped me, blinding me with tears. My lungs burned with searing pain. I couldn't breath. I thought I was going to die. Everyone was running, choking, gasping, fleeing in all directions, bumping into each other in the blinding miasma.

A gas canister fired from a shotgun hit a woman near me and exploded — she screamed in agony but I couldn't see where she was. Some kind of hideous monster with a long black snout — a cop in a gas mask, I realized — abruptly materialized out of the fumes and smashed the butt of his rifle into my shoulder, knocking me to the ground. Someone tripped over me before I managed to get up and continue trying to escape. Every gasping breath was agony. My chest burned, my eyes gushed tears.

More cops appeared and disappeared in the acrid, stinking smoke, flailing with their clubs at anyone and everyone. I could hear the sickening thuds of wood striking flesh, and I must have been hit several more times because the next day I had long, dark, aching bruises on my back and side. At the time, though, I didn't feel the blows at all. An adrenaline rush can often block out pain — for a short while." 

Both regular CS tear gas and the more powerful military-grade CN war gas are fired into the throng. Normally, police use tear gas to herd protesters out of an area, but the Troopers blanket the entire field leaving no avenue for escape. Crowd control is not their objective — their purpose is to punish the Meredith March for challenging the southern way of life and defying white-supremacy.

Some of the marchers try to take shelter against the school building's brick wall until a local cop lobs three gas canisters right into them. So-called lawmen knock down the tent poles and then toss tear gas bombs under the collapsed canvas to gas those now trapped beneath. "You niggers want your freedom — well, here's your freedom," a cop yells at Odessa Warwick, a mother of eleven as he kicks her, fracturing her spine.

Marchers are overcome by the fumes, passing out where they fall. Heads are bloodied and bones broken by rifle butts and billy clubs. A young boy coughs up blood, a four year old child fights to breath. Trying to aid the victims, MCHR medical worker Charles Meyer is clubbed down and kicked into a ditch. A woman is dragged down by her long blond hair. One-legged Jim Leatherer is brutally beaten, Troopers continually kick a young Black man who is on the ground vomiting uncontrollably. Another trooper smashes a priest with his shotgun and a marcher cries out, "He's a man of God!" "I'll put him with his God," shouts the Trooper as he hits the priest again.

Stokely Carmichael:

I took a direct hit in the chest from a canister and was knocked to the ground. Semiconscious and unable to breathe; my eyes tearing. My ribs felt as though crushed. Gas in my lungs was always my weakness. ... Choking for breath, I could hear screams, shouts, and Dr. King calling on people to remain calm amid the sickening thud of blows. They were kicking and clubbing people lying on the ground to escape the gas. Men, women, children, it made no difference. Then they were gone, leaving us to tend the wounded. So obviously it had simply been a demonstration of naked brute force for its own sake (Canton 2-4).

Jo Freeman, a white volunteer:

“My whole body felt blistered; my scalp felt like every hair was being pulled out one by one, and my lungs as though I was inhaling molten steel” (Weisbrot 2).

By sundown, the school grounds are cleared of protesters except for those too injured or overcome by gas to move. In the Afro-American community around the periphery of the McNeal grounds protesters and bystanders are all suffering from the after-effects of chemical attack and in many cases injuries and wounds from rifle butts and billy clubs.

A small child convulses on the floor of his home across the street from the school. His frantic mother grabs him up and runs outside desperately searching for help. "Lady, give him to me!" shouts a marcher. "I just got back from Vietnam, and I know what to do for him." The ground is muddy from the garden hose people are using to wash out their eyes and rinse the burning reside from their skin. He washes out the boy's eyes and then grabs a handful of mud, coating the child's face with it.

The emergency aid resources of MCHR are overwhelmed. Many of its volunteers are among the injured and incapacitated. Dr. Poussaint rallies his team to set up an emergency triage point in the Holy Child Jesus Mission with the nuns doing what they can to ease suffering. He phones for help to Jackson just 30 minutes down the road. From there, funeral director Clarie Collins Harvey directs Afro-American owned hearses to Canton where they act as makeshift ambulances carrying the worst injured to a Jackson hospital willing to treat Black protesters. All through the night, MCHR workers and the nuns labor to treat the victims of a brutal police riot.

Poussaint would later tell an interviewer, "We were all enraged. There was just so much rage." Stokely has to be restrained by friends from a futile charge into the police line. Rev. Andrew Young of SCLC, normally a calming presence, later recalls that with gas burning his lungs and eyes he thought to himself, ""If I had a machine gun, I'd show those motherfuckers!" Yet he manages to subordinate his anger to strategic realities and talk down a SNCC militant who is urging people to assault the heavily-armed Troopers and set fire to their cars.

Boiling fury engulfs Canton's Afro-American community and the Meredith Marchers. Some Black residents grab their guns and have to be pulled back from suicidal retaliation. His eyes still burning with tears, Dr. King manages to assemble those march leaders who can be found for an emergency meeting at George Raymond's home just a block from McNeal. Soon march marshals and local leaders are out on the night-dark streets urging people to assemble at a nearby church where the Meredith Marchers can grab some food, the injured be directed to the MCHR aid station, and local folk rally in the adjacent Catholic Mission's basketball court.

Bruce Hartford, SCLC, explained the marchers’ counter-response.

We would march that night through Canton's Afro-American neighborhoods to express our defiance and provide a nonviolent channel for the community's rage. ... Along with the other SCLC staff, I was given a colored armband and assigned to act as a march marshal, keeping people moving, defusing trouble, and maintaining nonviolence.

… Five or six hundred of us marched out of the church onto the unpaved and unlit roads of Canton's Afro-American community. This wasn't an on-the-sidewalk or avoid-blocking-traffic march. Instead we filled the streets singing and calling bystanders to come join us. Block by block our numbers grew as people joined us, but in the dark it was impossible to estimate or count how many were marching.

Some of the ultra-militants and the most strident Black Power advocates called for people to go downtown and "get whitey," others shouted that we should challenge the cops who were still guarding the disputed schoolyard. Fortunately, they had little support. Marshals like me urged the marchers to hold together and maintain nonviolent discipline. Most of the marchers were local folk with a solid grasp of Canton's tactical realities and they heeded our call.

Seething with anger, for an hour or more we surged through the dark streets, defiantly singing our freedom songs and chanting "Black Power" and "Freedom Now!""

A year earlier, when Alabama Troopers savagely attacked voting rights marchers in Selma, the world, the media, and the national political establishment reacted with outrage and determination. But now in the new political context shaped by violent urban uprisings, the "white backlash," media-hyped hysteria over Black Power, and the Freedom Movement's efforts to address issues related to economic justice and northern-style segregation, the media response to Canton is sparse and ambivalent.

After Selma, President Johnson addressed the nation and pushed the Voting Rights Act through Congress. About Canton he says nothing. Nothing at all. He refuses to meet with a delegation of ministers who want federal protection for civil rights protesters in Mississippi. The Attorney General's response is tepid, he "regrets" the use of tear gas and adds, "I'm sorry it happened. It always makes the situation more difficult." He then assures the public that he is confident Mississippi authorities will protect the civil rights of Afro-Americans in their state (Canton 4-6).

After a few short hours of exhausted slumber on the hard floor of the Holy Child Jesus basketball court, the Meredith marchers awake bruised and battered the next morning, Friday the 24th. Their clothing is still impregnated with chemical residue of the gas attack and their eyes sting and tear. Local Afro-American women have been laboring since dawn in the church kitchen to provide the Meredith Marchers a breakfast of hot coffee, bacon, grits, and biscuits smothered in gravy. As they wolf it down the marchers huddle in organizational staff meetings to be briefed on the plan that march leaders working late into the night have agreed on.

The tactical situation is complex. …

To ensure maximum participation by local Blacks the [march’s culminating] rally [in Jackson] is scheduled for Sunday the 26th two days hence, and out-of-state supporters have made travel plans accordingly. So the rally date can't be changed to accommodate surprise events such as the violence in Philadelphia and the gas attack in Canton. Which means that a march contingent has to depart from Canton on this Friday to be sure of reaching Tougaloo on time.

After the mob violence in Philadelphia MS, Dr. King promised to return on this Friday for a second protest in Neshoba County. One that will express the anger and defiance of local Blacks and show that the Freedom Movement cannot be halted by mob violence. Movement supporters from both Mississippi and Alabama are already on the road and Black communities in Neshoba and Lauderdale counties are mobilizing. If King doesn't show up now it will appear he is surrendering to fear of white violence — which he will not do. So King and a sizable contingent of marchers from Canton have to drive east to join the Philadelphia march.

Local Afro-Americans and the Meredith Marchers in Canton, of course, are still enraged over the gas attack and savage beatings of the evening before. And just as white violence in Neshoba can't be allowed to deter the Movement neither can police repression be allowed to do so in Canton. Which means that in addition to marching south towards Jackson and protesting in Neshoba there has to be strong direct action this day on the streets of Canton.

Albert Turner of SCLC is chosen to lead a small contingent of Meredith Marchers south on Highway-51 towards Tougaloo, while a larger contingent fills the available cars to accompany Dr. King, Floyd McKissck, and Stokely Carmichael to Philadelphia and the largest group of marchers and local folk remain in Canton for a day of action.

In a telegram to LBJ sent immediately after the violent outbreak in Philadelphia, Dr. King cited the "Clear and absolute breakdown of law and order in Philadelphia." And in reference to the planned return march he added, "We therefore implore you to send the necessary federal protection to Philadelphia, Miss. to protect the lives and safety of the citizens seeking to exercise our constitutional rights."

After the Philadelphia violence, a delegation of clergymen asked for a meeting with LBJ to press for federal protection and a thousand Movement supporters rallied in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House. Johnson, however, is unwilling to forgive King's opposition to the Vietnam War. And with the Meredith March manifesto explicitly condemning federal civil rights failures, as a matter of practical politics he can't use the march to further his own legislative agenda. Nor does he want to be seen as in any way siding with "Black Power" militancy. So the clergymen were turned aside and the protesters outside ignored.

The President rejects King's plea for federal protection replying that, "Personnel of the Department of Justice will be present" (as they had been on the first occasion). And in willful denial of self-evident realities he goes on to tell King that, "Governor Paul Johnson has assured [us] that law and order will be maintained Friday in Philadelphia and throughout the march, and that all necessary protection can and will be provided."

The mob violence in Neshoba and the horrific police assault in Canton pleases and gratifies many white voters in the state, boosting Governor Johnson's public support. But behind the scenes the state's power-structure remains split between hard-line segregationists determined to restore the old Jim Crow order with club and gun and self-described "racial moderates" who want to bring northern investment and business opportunities into Mississippi.

Across the state, affluent white businessmen desire lucrative national franchise opportunities like Burger King, Holiday Inn, 7-11, and the like, but those chains now insist on full compliance with the Civil Rights Act because they know they face consumer boycotts in the North if they tolerate segregation in the South. Yet any business that tries to operate on a desegregated basis in Mississippi faces economic boycotts by the White Citizens Council and possible Klan violence. …

On the previous Philadelphia march, State Troopers had been conspicuous by their absence but on this day they are out in force. Many of them had been part of the brutal attack the evening before in Canton but now they have new orders from the governor to maintain law and order and prevent the kind of lynch-mob violence that damages the state's reputation.

A newspaper editorial and radio announcements by local white leaders urge whites to ignore the march and refrain from ugly violence "[even though] "we know it is hard to take a lot of the lies, insults, and actions of beatniks who are worked up to fever pitch by their leaders with sessions of 'prayer.'"

When the marchers reach the downtown area, the sidewalks bordering the paved streets of white-controlled Philadelphia are again lined with hostile, jeering whites, men and women held back by flimsy rope barriers strung up by law enforcement. Those on the sidewalk jeer, curse, and spit at the marchers while others lean out the second story windows shrieking hate. State Troopers, however, do hold the mob at bay. When the Black protesters reach the courthouse the mayor uses a bullhorn to warn surrounding whites against violence.

Local leader Rev. Clint Collier opens the rally with a prayer and a freedom sermon: "We have been dictated to long enough," he tells the demonstrators. From the rear of the jeering crowd of whites glass soda pop bottles are hurled at him. In his short address Stokely says: "The people gathered around us represent America in its truest form. We will start representing ourselves in our way, and we will do it in our way." True to his nature, Dr. King offers a positive message of hope: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice and "We're gonna win, because the Bible is right when it says, 'Ye shall reap what ye sow.'"

"Go to hell!" scream the mob of surrounding whites, "Nigger! You're a nigger! Wait till tonight, you black bastards, we'll find you then! We're gonna kill King! We're gonna kill King!" Their rage is palpable, yet the police presence holds violence in check.

As the marchers return to Independence Quarters a white man guns his engine and attempts to drive his car into the line — protesters manage to dodge out of the way at the last second. The Troopers then arrest him and his passenger. But in that instant of swirling action and confusion, Neshoba County lawmen draw their pistols and point them at the demonstrators rather than the vehicle trying to run them down.

…

Rather than wait to join the caravan of Meredith Marchers returning to Canton, a car with three white ministers from the North and a Black NAACP official from Memphis decide to leave the rally early. Alone.

Their route takes them across Leake County where in response to the Meredith March, the local KKK has just bombed the St. Joachim Catholic School for Negroes. They are now patrolling Route-16 for marchers traveling between Philadelphia and Canton and a car with an Afro-American and three whites in cleric collars is an obvious target. A pickup truck driven by Klansmen tries to run them off the highway but the freedom car dodges. The KKK truck then blocks the road ahead while another car driven by Klan tries to ram the integrated vehicle. Somehow they manage to escape, turn around, and flee back towards Philadelphia at high speed with the KKK in hot pursuit until they reach Independence Quarters where armed Blacks stand on guard (Return 1-4).

In Canton on Friday morning the local Afro-American community continues to seethe over the savage police riot of the previous evening. Crowds gather early at Asbury Methodist Church and the adjacent Holy Child Jesus Mission. Everyone is determined to take strong action — but there's no agreement over what that action should be.

Local Movement leaders call for renewing the 1964 boycott of downtown Canton's white-owned stores with the slogan, "Black Out for Black Power." And also a day of disciplined, nonviolent protest as a show of determination and defiance. The white merchants of Canton are particularly vulnerable to boycotts by their Afro-American customers because they're in direct competition with the larger, more numerous, and better-stocked stores in Jackson just 30 minutes down the road — which is one reason the previous boycott had hurt them so badly.

Soon local members of the Madison County Movement are downtown, handing out boycott flyers, picketing stores with boycott and Black Power signs, and tying up traffic by slowly crossing the street at a leisurely pace. A voter registration march to the courthouse is blocked by the cops. A second march is allowed to proceed, but only on the sidewalk, not in the streets. When they arrive at the courthouse they are told that the clerk is "out to lunch." Some 50 or so Black citizens then add themselves to the voting rolls by registering with the federal examiner under the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

Bruce Hartford recalled:

… more than 500 chanting and singing marchers were snaking through the streets of Canton. In the Black neighborhoods we walked two-by-two on the side of the dirt roads next to the drainage ditches and in the white neighborhoods on their well-kept sidewalks. Marching into white areas was a bold and defiant move, a decisive declaration that rejected the deferential subservience of the past and a gesture that risked spontaneous violence from enraged whites. ... I remember nervous rumors passing up and down the line — that a parked car we were about to pass concealed a dynamite bomb, that in the next block they had a pack of dogs waiting to attack us, that the old white woman scowling at us from her porch had a big pistol hidden under her apron as she rocked back and forth on her rocker and that she'd sworn to shoot anyone who stepped on her lawn.

None of the protests, however, approach McNeal Elementary which remains guarded by heavily armed Troopers who have now stationed rifle-equipped snipers on the roof and erected searchlights to pick out targets after nightfall. The local power structure and police forces remain adamantly opposed to Blacks using the school for any Movement purpose. Yet almost all of those boycotting, picketing and marching — local movement and Meredith Marchers both — are determined to return to the schoolyard and defy the cops by pitching a tent. Some are collecting donations to buy new tents, others are trying to sew together bedsheets for a symbolic, make-do tent. "Come hell or high water," Movement activists tell each other, "a tent's gonna go up tonight."

For both sides now, the right of Afro-Americans to use McNeal has become a make-or-break symbol. Even though Blacks are marching and picketing all over the streets of Canton, white politicians can't accept Afro-American use of a Colored school for a protest-purpose because doing so concedes the point that Black taxpayers have the same legal right to access public facilities for public politics that whites have enjoyed for generations. Moreover, having denied permission the previous day, allowing Afro-Americans to protest there now would be an obvious concession, a retreat of white power forced by growing Black power. Which in turn clearly implies that henceforth elected officials must take Afro-American concerns into account. In essence then, Afro-American use of McNeal has become a practical clash between the traditional dominance of white power and the Freedom Movement's demand for Black Power.

…

Living in Canton is Colonel Charles Snodgrass, the state-wide commanding officer of the Troopers — an appointed rather than elected position. He breaks the impasse by inviting Madison County Movement leaders to a meeting in his office, the first such official meeting between the Movement and white authorities ever held in Canton. He offers other camping sites, but George Raymond replies that after the savage brutality of his Troopers the Black community needs to see tents go up at McNeal.

Local, state, and national Movement leaders assemble for an emergency summit meeting in the sweltering, jam-packed living room of Afro-American store owner George Washington. …

The meeting is tense and contentious. Stokley and Chinn argue for pitching the tents regardless of consequences. But Devine, Goodloe, and King convince the group to accept an invitation arranged by Snodgrass for a Black delegation to meet for the first time ever with the Mayor and city attorney. At that meeting a compromise agreement with the white power-structure is worked out. The Madison County Movement can hold a political rally on the school grounds — a tactical win for Black political power; and by forcing recognition from white politicians and establishing a precedent of communication and consultation it's a strategic victory as well. But no tents can be erected — a concession to property rights and white power. …

Shortly before sunset, more than 1000 local Afro-Americans and a couple hundred Meredith Marchers pack the Holy Child Jesus basketball court for a mass meeting. Most are determined to defy the Troopers by setting up a tent at McNeal. Speaking for the Madison County Movement, Annie Devine begins by saying "We're going to the schoolyard," but before she can complete her thought the crowd roars approval and rushes out into the street to form up for a march to McNeal.

Singing and chanting, the crowd surges forward and steadily grows in number. Marchers find garden hoses to soak towels and handkerchiefs in case of tear gas. Rumors spread up and down the line, Troopers with machineguns ahead, attack dogs seen at the school, busses waiting to haul protesters to Parchman Prison. No one knows what lays ahead but everyone's determination and courage are at the peak.

When they reach McNeal, the Troopers have distanced themselves, the snipers are gone from the roof and the searchlights dismantled. But there are no tents to set up. Mrs. Devine and others try to explain the compromise, but many of the marchers, probably a majority, feel let down and betrayed. With their expectations dashed, some grumble "We've been sold out." Others shout, "Get the tents!" But there are no tents for anyone to get.

Discouraged and disgruntled, the marchers return to the basketball court for a mass meeting with reporters barred (an unusual occurrence). Local leaders argue their case that recognition by elected officials and opening up communications represented a significant step forward and that another bloody confrontation would be a setback. To fierce approval, Stokely and other militants condemn the compromise of a rally without the tents. Rev. James Lawson who had attended the leadership meeting that accepted the deal, counters that no one proposed any way to pitch the tents without another savage attack by the Troopers, "You are as much to blame as anyone else," he tells Stokely. "You should have been prepared to suggest how it could be done."

The divided and impassioned mass meeting drags on until 2am, leaving some feeling bitter and betrayed, others seeing in the compromise a partial victory won without another round of police violence, no one hospitalized with injuries, and no one shot to death (Streets 1-4).

Works cited:

“Canton: Tear Gas & Rifle Butts, June 23.” Meredith Mississippi March and Black Power (June). Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (Jan-June). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis66.htm#1966mmaf

“On the Streets of Canton Mississippi, June 24.” Meredith Mississippi March and Black Power (June). Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (Jan-June). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis66.htm#1966mmaf

“Return to Philadelphia MS, June 24.” Meredith Mississippi March and Black Power (June). Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (Jan-June). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis66.htm#1966mmaf

Walton, Becca. “Canton Civil Rights Movement.” Mississippi Encyclopedia. Web. https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/canton-civil-rights-movement/

Weisbrot, Robert. “Remembering the March Against Fear.” Colby Magazine. Summer 2014. Web. https://www.colby.edu/magazine/remembering-the-march-against-fear/

Civil Rights Events

Meredith March against Fear

Yazoo City, Internal Strife, Philadelphia

 Access this map to follow the direction of the Meredith March. https://www.crmvet.org/docs/mmm_map.htm

… as the marchers trek through the muggy heat from Greenwood to Belzoni and thence to Louise, Stokely's call for "Black Power" has created a sensation in the press and consternation among white liberals. No one is surprised that the white-owned southern media reacts to "Black Power" with predictable outrage over the threatened end of the social norms that shape their white identity and sense of God-granted privilege. Nor that most of them see it as a confirmation of all their worst, fever-fear imaginings of Black vengeance and anti-white violence. What's new is that significant sectors of the northern "liberal" media echo those southern themes — as does even a portion of the Black-owned press.

…

Again and again, the mass media equates Black Power with a call for Black violence. Newspaper columnists and TV pundits express fear that the slogan will inevitably inflame northern ghettos into summer explosions even larger than Harlem and Philadelphia in '64 and Watts in '65. …

On Sunday the 19th, Stokely appears on Face the Nation, the premier talk show of CBS. The panelists confront him again and again with statements and questions like:

Q: This would seem to imply that you are advocating taking power by force and violence — by the overthrow, in effect, of the government. Is that what you mean?

Q: Mr. Carmichael, do you reject the ultimate use of violence as a final last resort in bringing down the power structure?

Q: How can you not reject violence and be the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee?

Q: Are you telling us that the Negro can riot and take over? What do you mean by Black Power? Are you saying the Negro can take over parts of the country?

…

Stokely deftly avoids either endorsing or opposing violence on the part of Blacks, arguing instead that it is up to oppressed people themselves to decide for themselves the best tactics and strategies to end their subjugation. He defends the right of Afro-Americans to enjoy and employ political power the same way that the Irish, Jews, and Italians have done. He focuses on building up Afro-American economic power, and in black-majority regions developing third-party political organizations that are independent of the white-dominated Republican and Democratic Parties — as in Lowndes County, Alabama. Yet so focused are they on their own assumptions, his establishment interlocutors don't hear what he's actually saying. It's as if they are in two completely separate conversations.

Some months later, Dr. King described the media's coverage of Black Power:

The press kept the debate going. News stories now centered, not on the injustices of Mississippi, but on the apparent ideological division in the civil rights movement. Every revolutionary movement has its peaks of united activity and its valleys of debate and internal confusion. This debate might well have been little more than a healthy internal difference of opinion, but the press loves the sensational and it could not allow the issue to remain within the private domain of the movement. In every drama there has to be an antagonist and a protagonist, and if the antagonist is not there the press will find and build one.

…

Though disconnected from the media frenzy, the Meredith marchers still passionately argue and debate Black Power from their own perspectives. Disputes are intense and at times bitter and angry — particularly between members of SNCC and SCLC. Chants of "Black Power" and "Freedom Now" increasingly become antagonistic battle cries used to drown out, dominate, and defeat the other side. So much so, that the most extreme proponents seem to be on the verge of physical violence against each other — in full view of the national press who are eager for ever more dramatic stories of internal dissension (Controversy 1-2).

Days of marching in the muggy heat and the debilitating effect of internal dissension reduces the number of non-local marchers. On the morning of Tuesday the 21st, just 60 or so men and women head south from Louise on state Route-149 for the 17 mile trek to Yazoo City.

Situated on the southern edge of the Delta, Yazoo City is a racist stronghold that has resisted the Freedom Movement for years. Though Afro-Americans are a majority in Yazoo County, barely more than 10% are registered to vote. Yet as the marchers cross over the Yazoo River bridge into town their number is doubled by an enthusiastic crowd of local Black youth who give the protesters a warm welcome.

As with Grenada a week earlier, Yazoo's white power-structure adopts a conciliatory, "no-confrontation-in-front-of-the national-press strategy." They urge local whites to avoid the marchers and refrain from heckling and acts of violence — instructions that local whites accept and obey. Yazoo is not unusual in the control that the powers-that-be have. As elsewhere throughout the South, while the KKK and similar organizations are on occasion a law unto themselves, most of the time white violence is — to a significant degree — controlled and directed by power elites who either encourage or discourage it as they choose.

Police officers escort the marchers along Broadway and Main Street … to the municipal recreation center where they allow a tent encampment. Though they've drained the public swimming pool to prevent any interracial swimming, the city makes the pool showers available — a welcome and needed refreshment for marchers who have been slogging through the summer heat for days.

Matters, however, are quite different 100 miles to the east in Philadelphia MS, the seat of Neshoba County, where for the past several days CORE and MFDP [Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]organizers have been mobilizing for a protest march and memorial to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of the Chaney-Schwerner-Goodman lynching. During Freedom Summer just two years earlier, on June 21st 1964, the three civil rights workers had been detained and held in jail by local lawmen who then turned them over to a KKK death squad for execution.

Since then, against great odds a local Freedom Movement has been built in Philadelphia and Neshoba County. Courageous Blacks have registered to vote, filed desegregation lawsuits, protested intolerable conditions and launched an economic boycott of white merchants to demand police reforms. But the same sheriff, deputies, and power-structure that orchestrated the lynching remains firmly in power. They are determined to maintain the Jim Crow, "southern way of life" with economic reprisal, legal repression, and racist violence — white racial "moderates" hold no sway in Neshoba County.

Local Movement leader Rev. Clint Collier who is running for Congress as an MFDP candidate has been fired from his job as a public school teacher, been beaten by whites for trying to buy a cup of coffee at a segregated diner, and arrested and thrown in jail because of his civil rights work. Sheriff Rainey and Deputy Price, the architects of the Chaney-Schwerner-Goodman lynching continually threaten Afro-Americans who fail to "stay in their place." As do their Ku Klux Klan allies.

While most of the Meredith marchers head towards Yazoo City, Dr. King and a small group of SCLC and CORE members drive over to Philadelphia from Louise to join local Blacks, supporters from Meridian, and MFDP activists from around the state in the memorial and commemoration march. They all gather at Mt. Nebo Baptist Church in the "Independence Quarter" — Philadelphia's main Afro-American neighborhood.

After a brief mass meeting, Dr. King and Rev. Collier lead 200 marchers out of Mt. Nebo Church towards the county courthouse. Though local law enforcement has known about the memorial march for weeks, only a dozen or so poorly-trained and ill-equipped cops are on duty — and their sympathies are clearly aligned with white-supremacy. No Deacons for Defense are present because they're guarding the marchers who are trekking towards Yazoo City. Some FBI agents and Justice Department officials are on hand, but as usual they self-limit their role to taking notes rather than actively upholding federal law or defending the constitutional rights of Afro-Americans.

Singing "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around," the marchers approach the small "downtown" district where a large crowd of furious whites screaming hatred wait for them. Cars driven by hostile whites charge at the protesters, forcing them to jump aside. Rev. Abernathy of SCLC leads a brief memorial prayer at the county jail where the three men had been secretly held before they were handed over to the KKK lynch mob. Against the noise of the jeering whites and their honking car horns almost no one can hear him. A furious white man attacks a TV camera crew. The local cops smile, grin, and do nothing.

"Freedom Now! Freedom Now!" chant the marchers in defiance. "You done killed our boys! But we on the march and ain't turnin' round. Ain't nobody gonna turn us 'round. You cain't turn us 'round!" shouts a Black woman at the white hecklers. Another Afro-American woman sees her white employer screaming hate at her, "Yes! It's me and I've kept your children," she shouts back.

On the steps of the Neshoba County Courthouse, King and Abernathy confront Deputy Cecil Price who had played a central role in the lynching. "You're the one who had Schwerner and the other fellows in jail," says King. "Yes, sir," responds Price with pride in his voice.

The 200 marchers at the courthouse are mostly Afro-American with a scattering of white supporters. They are outnumbered two or three to one by the surrounding mob who hurl exploding cherry bombs at them. "I am not afraid of any man. Whether he is in Mississippi or Michigan, whether he is in Birmingham or Boston. I am not afraid,” preaches King as firecrackers explode around him (Ordeal 1-3).

In his book Bearing the Cross author David Garrow described the scene. “Heckling from the whites almost drowned out King’s words, and newsmen looked on nervously as he spoke prayerfully about the three young men’s sacrifice. ‘King appeared to be shaken’ as the whites’ shouts grew more vociferous, and his voice quavered when he declared that ‘I believe in my heart that the murderers are somewhere around me at this moment’ while Cecil Price smirked only a few steps behind him. ‘You’re damn right, they’re behind you right now,’ Price muttered” (False 4).

Ignoring the white violence erupting all around them, Deputy Price suddenly grabs local leader Rev. Collier and throws him to the ground, declaring him under arrest for prior traffic tickets. Bruce Latimer, the Chief of Police, orders the protesters "Now you better GIT!"

Under a fizzled of firecrackers, rocks, and bottles the march retreats towards the safety of Independence Quarter. An elderly Afro-American marcher falls out of the line and collapses, suffering an epileptic seizure. MCHR nurse Dorothy Williams hovers over him, protecting him from hostile whites armed with clubs and knives while she tries to ease his suffering. Somehow she manages to get him into a truck driven by a Movement supporter but then she's grabbed and surrounded by the mob until a volunteer leaps from the truck and drags her over the tailgate as the vehicle races off under a hail of missiles.

Meanwhile, back at the courthouse, fights break out between whites armed with ax-handles and knives and Afro-American onlookers who had been watching the protest. Finally, with the protesters now gone, the police exert their authority and command a halt to the violence.

King tells a reporter, "This is a terrible town, the worst I've seen. There is a complete reign of terror here," He has no idea that within a month he will face far worse white violence during fair housing marches in the Chicago suburbs. So much so that he will then tell another reporter, "I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I had never seen, even in Mississippi, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as in Chicago."

The marchers who retreat to Mr. Nebo Church are battered, bruised, frightened, discouraged — and determined to continue fighting for their freedom. Dr. King promises that in three days time, on Friday June 24, he will return to lead an even larger march back to the Neshoba County courthouse. One that will defy white supremacy and racist violence and make evident to all that the Freedom Movement won't back down. He and Abernathy then bravely return to the Neshoba County courthouse to bail out Rev. Collier before harm befalls him. Cecil Price glares at Collier and tells him, "We'd like to work you over, and we would have worked you over if that crowd hadn't been out there. And we will work you over yet" (Ordeal 4-5).

Interviewed by Eyes on the Prize in 1988, SNCC activist Cleveland Sellers made these comments.

Philadelphia was the area where Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney had been killed, the summer of '64 and it was an area that, that I personally had been in because I went in there to try to look for the bodies in the summer of '64. And, we felt a kind of, of bitterness about Philadelphia because we knew that they were murdered but there was not going to be any justice done. So we felt like we needed to go back to Philadelphia even though the march was coming down the eastern part of the state of Mississippi. We felt it important to, to move over to Philadelphia and make a statement. And we did that. And we went into Philadelphia and as I remember Martin King was kneeling and praying and, and all of the people who went to Philadelphia, we had a little, short march. We were kneeling down and praying. And, ah, I, I remember, ah, Dr. Abernathy, ah, giving the prayer and he was saying something to the effect of "Let us pray for those who have murdered our comrades, our friends, and wherever they may be." And over from out of the back you heard this response saying, "Well, we're standing right over here." And that was quite terrifying because you knew that that was a serious retort because we're talking about the sheriffs and the deputies who were involved and many of the outstanding citizens. So, at that point, people recognized that the situation was turning. We had absolutely no protection from the local police authority, the State Police authority or the federal government. So we felt like it was important for us to try to turn around and ease out of that community. But what, what happened there was, I think Martin King became really, ah, an eye witness to the violent nature of Mississippi and how hostile the place could be. And we were able to get out of there before anybody was hurt seriously. There were some scuffles that took place. But we just got out of there barely with our lives, we feel. And, ah, that began to, to change the dynamic and get people to understand the nature of the struggle and the commitment and dedication on the part of many SNCC people who had to work under those conditions for long, long, long periods of the time without any kind of outlet (Interview 9).

While protesters are defying a racist mob in Philadelphia and Meredith Marchers are trekking towards Yazoo City, Charles McLaurin of SNCC and Joe Harris of the Delta Ministry lead more than 100 Afro-Americans on a 10-mile voter registration march through Sunflower County in the heart of the Delta to the courthouse in Indianola. Sunflower is the birthplace of the White Citizens Council and political stronghold of the ultra-racist Senator James Eastland. It's a Black majority county, the home of MFDP leader Fannie Lou Hamer, and an area where SNCC has been helping build a local Freedom Movement since 1962. Yet white-supremacy continues to dominate through intimidation and fear. Despite four years of hard, dangerous organizing and passage of the Voting Rights Act, only 13% of the county's Afro-Americans are registered to vote.

From Philadelphia, King and other SCLC leaders fly to Indianola to join them. When King arrives, he addresses a spirited rally of more than 300 local Afro- Americans. McLaurin leads the crowd in calls for, "Black Power." Ralph Abernathy of SCLC leads chants of "Freedom Now!" The people enthusiastically shout both slogans. … As in Yazoo City and Grenada, the local white power-structure chooses not to foment white violence so there is none (Ordeal 5).

As evening falls on the evening of the 21st, a huge Afro-American crowd numbering close to 1,000 gather for a rally in the Yazoo City park where the Meredith Marchers are camping. Local leaders, SNCC, SCLC, and Deacons for Defense speakers address the crowd who loudly cheer them all. But beneath the surface the speeches are becoming increasingly antagonistic duels between supporters and opponents of Black Power, different interpretations of Black Power, and violence versus nonviolence. SNCC militant Willie Ricks urges the crowd, "When a white man attacks us, attack him back!" and Deacons leader Ernst Thomas argues that few Afro-Americans support nonviolence and that if "rednecks abuse any Black people ... there'll be a blood-red Mississippi"

In the view of King and SCLC staff, that rhetoric violates the agreement of a nonviolent march with self-defense against terrorism outside of the protest. It moves the march into a realm of aggressive retaliatory violence and a step down the road towards race war. When it's his turn to address the crowd, King [who has just returned from Indianola] tells them:

“I'm ready to die myself. When I die I'm going to die for something, and at that moment, I guess, it will be necessary, but I'm trying to say something to you, my friends, that I hope we will all gain tonight, and that is that we have a power. We can't win violently. We have neither the instruments nor the techniques at our disposal, and it would be totally absurd for us to believe we could do it. The weakness of violence from our side, the weakness of a riot from our side, is that a riot can always be halted by superior force. But we have another method, and I've seen it, and they can't stop it. ... Don't worry about getting your guns tonight. Don't worry about your Molotov cocktails tonight. You have something more powerful and if you work with [nonviolence], morning will come” (Holding 1).

King added: “I am not going to allow anybody to pull me so low as to use the very methods that perpetuated evil throughout our civilization. I'm sick and tired of violence . . . . I'm tired of evil. I'm not going to use violence no matter who says it!”

The next day, in a small item without a byline, the New York Times reported on Dr. King's comments:

YAZOO CITY, Miss., June 21 - Tonight at a rally in Yazoo City, Dr. King lashed out at the student committee's policy of advocating "black power" and at the Deacons for Defense and Justice, which urges Negroes to arm themselves in self-defense.

"Some people are telling us to be like our 'oppressor, who has a history of using Molotov cocktails, who has a history of dropping the atom bomb, who has a history of lynching Negroes," he said. "Now people are telling me to stoop down to that level.

"I'm sick and tired of violence. I'm tired of the war in Vietnam. I'm tired of Molotov cocktails" (False 7-8).

That morning, Wednesday June 22, a large voter registration rally is held at the Yazoo County courthouse and more than 100 Afro-Americans are added to the voting rolls. A hostile crowd of local whites look on, but obedient to instructions from the power-structure they commit no violence. The Meredith marchers then head east on State Route 16 for the 10 mile hike to the little hamlet of Benton MS where they camp on the grounds of Oak Grove Baptist Church. Among the marchers are those who had faced mob violence in Philadelphia the previous day. They recount the brutality and terror of police-sanctioned mob violence. The marchers seethe with rage. and a fierce determination not to back down fills them. Many vow that on Friday they will return to Philadelphia to stand with Dr. King and the Black citizens of Neshoba County.

While the increasingly angry marchers head for Benton, Dr. King convenes another summit meeting of Meredith March leaders in Yazoo City to address the "widening split in our ranks" — particularly the increasingly bitter division over Black Power between SNCC and SCLC staff and the strident condemnations of nonviolence and calls for aggressive Black violence by some of the most militant speakers at recent mass meetings. It is clear that King is pondering whether he and SCLC is going to withdraw from the march.

For hours they debate philosophy, strategy, tactics, perceptions, nuance and anticipated consequences. There is little indication that any minds are changed, but in the interest of maintaining enough unity for the Meredith March to continue as a coalition effort including King and SCLC they mutually agree to tell their organizational staffs to refrain from stoking contentious rivalry, that march leaders won't invoke dueling chants of either "Black Power" or "Freedom Now," or make inflammatory public calls for retaliatory violence (as opposed to self-defense outside of the march) — though march participants and local folk remain free to say and chant whatever they wish.

The meeting ends with enough organization unity to continue, but the majority of SNCC and CORE members are determined to project the "Black Power" slogan both locally and nationally while SCLC supporters continue with "Freedom Now." Most of the local Mississippi marchers continue enthusiastically chanting both slogans, while white marchers are split, some uncomfortable with "Black Power," others having no problem with it.

Yet though the meeting fails to achieve agreement on substantive ideologic differences it does to some degree clear the air and ameliorate antagonism — at least among the organizational heads. Stokely joshes King, "Martin, I deliberately decided to raise this issue on the march in order to give it a national forum, and to force you to take a stand for Black Power." King laughs and replies, "I have been used before. One more time won't hurt" (Holding 2-3).

Cleveland Sellers commented about Carmichael and King’s relationship and SNCC’s commitment to non-violence.

… the relationship between Stokely and Martin was I think a very warm kind of relationship. Ah, we all knew that we had differences in terms of strategies and our tactics. I'll give you one example, that Martin believed in non-violence as a way of life. Ah, our concern about non-violence was only tactical. We used it when it became important for your survival to use non-violence. … What happens in a lot of instances is that the press began to use these differences even though they might have been completely minor to create rifts and try to break up the unity that existed within … the Civil Rights Movement. And I'm not saying that we didn't disagree tactically, organizationally, we did. But I think there was a personal, ah, relationship among SNCC people and SCLC people that was, that was very good and very healthy. Now, those relationships were strained at different times but we always managed to work our way through it.

…

I think that, ah, one of the things that we can look at in, in Philadelphia, Mississippi or anywhere along the march, the mode of non-violence was still there but I think we were beginning to come to grips with the fact that we had to be real with people in terms of, if somebody attacked you, that you expected to be able to protect yourself. So the whole idea, notion of self-defense was a growing, ah, notion inside of SNCC and inside of other civil rights organizations. Non-violence was a tactic for SNCC and we used it as a tactic. Ah, everybody in SNCC was not, ah,… non-violent as a way of life, as a philosophy. Ah, in Philadelphia, Mississippi … it was non-violence that assisted us in getting out of there. If we would of gotten involved in a, a confrontation in Philadelphia, Mississippi, we all probably [would have] been history (Interview 10, 11).

Works cited:

“Controversy over Black Power.” Meredith Mississippi March and Black Power (June). Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (Jan-June). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis66.htm#1966mmaf

“The False Memories of Haley Barbour.” Daily Kos.” February 28, 2011. Web. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2011/2/28/951269/-

“Holding Together, June 21-22.” Meredith Mississippi March and Black Power (June). Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (Jan-June). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis66.htm#1966mmaf

“Interview with Cleveland Sellers.” Eyes on the Prize Interviews. October 21, 1988. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eii/eiiweb/sel5427.0215.148clevelandsellers.html

“Ordeal in Philadelphia Mississippi, June 21.” Meredith Mississippi March and Black Power (June). Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (Jan-June). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis66.htm#1966mmaf