Civil Rights Events

Mississippi -- Granada County Freedom Movement

Giving No Quarter

As you drive through Grenada's paved, tree-shaded streets past red-brick homes and lush green lawns you know you are in Grenada's white world. Grenada's Negro world exists on dusty dirt roads, with small, weather-beaten "shotgun" shacks crammed side by side into every available inch of land. Negroes still sit in the rear of the four Greyhound busses that briefly pause each day at the bus depot. Negroes are not permitted to enter the library. White women work behind the desks and cash registers of downtown Grenada, Negro women push the mops and scrub the floors (Hartford 1).

When the marchers arrived in Grenada on June 15, 1966, City Manager John McEachin explained the situation to a reporter: “All we want is to get these people through town and out of here. Good niggers don’t want anything to do with this march. And there are more good niggers than sorry niggers.”

It didn’t work. The morning after an impassioned sermon by Dr. King, 200 people marched to the courthouse to register to vote. An American flag was set up next to the Civil War Memorial on the square. When the March Against Fear continued south, the registration fight continued (Bean 1).

When the Meredith March ends in Jackson on June 26th, SCLC sends additional staff bcak to Grenada as King had promised — including national-level SCLC leaders like Hosea Williams, Andrew Young, and Dr. King himself who splits his time between Grenada and the Chicago Freedom Movement's ferocious battle for open housing.

A cramped and busy Freedom Movement office is set up in Belle Flower Missionary Baptist Church on Pearl Street close by Highway-51. Belle Flower (sometimes referred to as Bellflower or Belle Flowers) is said to be the 3rd oldest Black church in Mississippi. As the newly-formed GCFM battles against adamant opposition from whites who are determined to return the Jim Crow racial order of the past, Belle Flower becomes the site of nightly, sometimes twice-daily, mass meetings.

And with City Manager McEachin's scheme to ease the Meredith March through town without any local challenges to white authority now proven to be an utter failure, the hardliners who favor Mississippi's traditional "knock 'em in the head and toss 'em in jail" methods of social control regain ascendance. Violence, arrests, and billy clubs are the new order of the day.

On July 4th, SCLC workers and local activists are invited to a barbecue in the rural Sweethome area by an Afro-American woman posing as a Movement supporter. Once they arrive, she calls Sheriff Suggs Ingram and 27 are arrested for "trespass" in what is obviously a set-up. Three days later, on Thursday July 7, a march protesting those arrests is broken up by the cops and more than 40 are arrested for violating a local "parade ordinance" (SCLC 1-2).

Thursday, July 7. At a mass meeting in Vincent Chapel, it is decided to stage a protest march that evening. The march is broken up by the police and 43 are arrested for violation of a parade ordinance (Hartford 3).

With most of its staff now languishing in jail, SCLC calls in reinforcements. By early July, the number of SCLC staff in Grenada is fluctuating between 10 and 15, almost all of whom are Afro-American. At a mass meeting on Saturday the 9th, the GCFM votes overwhelmingly for a campaign to make Grenada an "open city" — the terminology of the day that means a complete end to all forms of segregation. The GCFM presents 51 demands to the white power structure including desegregation of public facilities, Afro-American voter registrars with evening and neighborhood registration, and equal employment by government and private business.

Testing teams of Black high school students are sent to lunch counters & restaurants, the public library, the city swimming pool, and other previously segregated facilities. Most comply with the Civil Rights Act and serve these new Afro-American customers, but the swimming pool permanently closes rather then integrate. Sporadic heckling and threats of violence from white bystanders breaks out at a couple of locations.

The open city campaign continues for weeks with integration testing and lawsuits filed under the Civil Rights Act against non-complying establishments. The swimming pool remains closed because the thought of white girls and Black boys in close proximity to each other while wearing nothing but swimsuits is simply unacceptable to white adults. Other than that, the campaign is largely successful — at least in the technical sense that Afro-Americans willing to defy white hostility and the threat of later retaliation can demand, and receive, service at most establishments without being arrested. As a practical matter, however, most Blacks choose not to run such risks, so the custom of race segregation in Grenada remains largely — though not entirely — intact.

Later that Saturday afternoon, after the mass July 9th meeting, a white man in a pickup truck opens fire with a machinegun on a pair of civil rights workers who are talking to a Justice Department official next to Belle Flower church. They drop to the ground and the assassin misses, though the official's car is shot full of holes. The shooter is arrested a few blocks away and eventually tried on an unrelated minor charge. He is later acquitted by yet another all-white jury.

On Sunday the 10th, small integrated groups try to attend Sunday services at various white churches. Not a single Christian church allows an Afro-American inside to pray. None of the white SCLC staff accompanying them are allowed to enter either. Similar integration attempts are made on following Sundays for several weeks — all to no avail. No Blacks (or white Freedom Movement supporters) are allowed to worship with white Grenadans.

Meanwhile, most of the activists arrested on the July 7th march are still incarcerated and awaiting bail, so after church services a support rally is held outside the county lockup. Since the parade ordinance still bars organized protests, 50 or so demonstrators "drift" toward the jail in small groups from Belle Flower church. When the signal is given they quickly gather around the flagpole flying the "stars and bars" of the Mississippi state flag and begin singing freedom songs as loud as then can so the prisoners inside can hear them. The jail is adjacent to the Northside Black community, and a couple hundred Afro-American onlookers cheer the protesters from the sidelines.

Black kids too young to risk arrest as demonstrators act as freedom scouts. They report that a big force of Mississippi State Troopers in full riot gear are forming up behind the building. The rally quickly disperses, some participants returning back to Belle Flower, others joining the bystanders observing from across the street. When the platoon of shotgun-armed Troopers charge around the corner they find no protesters to attack. So they turn their fury on the crowd of bystanders peacefully observing from across the way, brutally assaulting them with rifle-butts and billy clubs — many are injured (SCLC 2-3).

Bruce Hartford, SCLC leader observed: (As a general rule in Grenada, the troopers preferred to beat folk with their rifles, while the city cops and sheriffs favored the more traditional billy clubs.) (Hartford 4).

At the Monday evening mass meeting on July 11, the GCFM votes to declare a "Blackout" (boycott) of Grenada's white merchants to protest the beatings, the arrests, and to enforce the 51 demands.

…

On Tuesday the 12th, civil rights lawyers persuade Judge Clayton of the federal district court in Oxford MS to declare the parade ordinance unconstitutional. Both Afro-Americans and whites see this as a Freedom Movement victory. Blacks respond with joy, whites with fury at federal "meddling" in their affairs. With the ordinance struck down, small teams begin picketing and leafletting the downtown stores to enforce the Blackout.

White political leaders publish the Movement's 51 demands in the local paper with a statement claiming that no one in Grenada racially discriminates and asserting that: "Demands, threats and intimidation are not proper, appropriate, or acceptable means of accomplishing anything, and any and all such tactics will be ignored. There will be no concessions of any type whatsoever, likewise there will be no acceding to any such demands."

On Wednesday the 13th, a large boycott picket line is mounted in the downtown area. All 45 of the protesters are quickly arrested on charges which are not explained. One activist comments, "It's like the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, arrest first, figure out charges later." Though the protesters are eventually bailed out, SCLC is short of funds so large picket lines are discontinued in favor of small picket teams. Small groups might be harassed or attacked by whites but they're not always arrested. And even if they are jailed, the amount needed to bail them out is less.

In response to the escalating repression, an afternoon mass meeting is held on Thursday the 14th — followed by a mass march.

[Large marches were an important Movement tactic. While enraged whites might spontaneously assault a small picket line, the social psychology was such that big marches were — for the most part — only vulnerable to attack by even bigger mobs incited to violence by Klan or Council leaders with the cooperation, or at least acquiescence, of the cops and courts. And Blacks who had good reason to fear that public support for the Freedom Movement put them at risk of economic retaliation by whites were often more willing to participate in a mass action where they were just one more face among many than in smaller more individually visible actions.]

Led by Hosea Williams of SCLC, some 220 Black Grenadans march from Belle Flower church up to the square to protest the Trooper attack and the increasing number of arrests. By some measures 220 people may seem small, but for a small town with only few thousand Afro-Americans of high school age or older, that so many defy a century of social conditioning and the very real threats of economic retaliation, police repression, and Klan violence is significant.

This is the first big march since the parade ordinance was struck down. Previous actions with 40 or 50 participants resulted in arrests and the demonstrators are tense, expecting at any moment to be confronted by the cops. But it turns out to be the first large action since the Meredith March that is not broken up by police violence or arrests.

When the marchers reach the town square and move on to the central green they discover that a dozen or so Black inmates from the notorious Parchman Prison have been brought in to "protect" the Confederate Memorial statue from "defilement" and "desecration."

Carefully watched by heavily-armed white prison guards, the inmates are under orders to physically assault any civil rights protester who approaches the monument. The prison guards, local cops, and white bystanders smile, and grin, and joke in anticipation of seeing Black prisoners compelled to attack Afro-American freedom marchers in defense of a memorial to Confederate soldiers who had died fighting to maintain slavery.

Understanding the terrible punishment that would be inflicted on the inmates if they refused to do as ordered, march leader Hosea Williams instructs the protesters to leave them and the statue alone. The rally is held at a distance from the memorial and its coerced defenders.

…

After another large afternoon march on Friday, a meeting of Grenada's tiny Black business & professional strata pledges to endorse the GCFM. As in other rural areas of the Deep South, the Afro-American middle class is made up mostly of teachers, ministers, and small business men & women (store owners, morticians, insurance agents, barbers & beauticians, and so on). While most local freedom movements in the south have backing from some members of the Black elite, such broad support among those who have the most to lose from economic retaliation by whites is unusual, attributable perhaps to both the breadth and power of the Grenada Movement and the influence of SCLC leaders — all of whom are themselves from that class.

As is the case elsewhere in the South, formal leadership positions in the Grenada Freedom Movement are held by men, but most of the actual leadership work is done by women outside the spotlight. Day after day, local leader Rev. Sharper Cunningham and senior SCLC staff like J.T. Johnson lead the marches, but women and children form the bulk of the protesters. As is also the case elsewhere in the South, the majority of those marching are high school students with girls outnumbering the boys (Square 1-4).

Bruce Hartford: July 15 we hold our first successful night march. We know that night marches are dangerous because racists can attack from cover of darkness — but more people can participate because it's after working hours. We start with 250 from Bellflower, go up around the courthouse, and then over to Union Street in the Negro section near Bellflower. There we hold a street rally. By the time we get back to the church there are more than 600 people on the march.

This establishes a pattern that is followed every day for the next three months: A mass meeting in the evening, then a night march to the square with either a rally at the courthouse or on the green (Hartford 9).

Day after day the marches and organizing continue. The cops are no longer blocking the big marches but they're continuing to harass and arrest boycott pickets. On Wednesday the 20th, Freedom Movement lawyers appear before Judge Clayton in Federal District court asking that police interference with lawful picketing and protests be halted. Two days later on Friday the 22nd, the judge issues a sweeping injunction commanding the white power-structure to accept that Afro-Americans have First Amendment rights, ordering the cops to stop interfering with legal protests, and instructing them to protect demonstrators from terrorist attack.

At the same time, the judge also issues a set of conduct rules that Movement protesters must obey. Under his order, singing is not allowed in residential areas, marchers have to walk two-by-two on the sidewalks or by the side the road, and obey all traffic rules. Large marches have to be broken into groups of 20 people with 20 feet separating each section. Since the marches were already obeying traffic rules GCFM leaders and lawyers accept his order without demurral — except when a march comes under mob attack at which point everyone closes up tight for protection and the judge be damned.

The white community reacts in fury to Judge Clayton's injunction. It's hard to tell who they hate more, the "Damn Yankee" federal government daring to tell them how to treat their "nigrahs," or the racial troublemakers challenging the tranquility of the Jim Crow "southern way of life." The judge and other federals, however, are distant targets protected by armed law enforcement. Protesters from the GCFM are not only nonviolent, but near at hand.

On Saturday evening, July 23rd, a large mob of 700 or more angry whites gather on the square to attack the nightly freedom march. Young Movement scouts spot cars with license plates from known KKK strongholds like Neshoba County and the Pearl River & Natchez areas of Mississippi and Louisiana. Such large mobs don't form spontaneously, someone with political clout has to organize and mobilize them, though no one takes public responsibility for doing so. The mob is made up almost entirely of white men who are visibly armed with clubs, baseball bats, steel pipes, chains, and knives.

Though the mob members are not brandishing firearms, the freedom scouts reporting back to Movement leaders in Belle Flower church assume they have hidden guns. Everyone gathered for the evening mass meeting understands that Grenada County Sheriff Suggs Ingram has no intention of protecting them from white racists who are his voting constituents. Not on that night. Not ever.

The normal Mississippi practice is to station one or two State Troopers in each rural county, but since the beginning of July the Grenada contingent has been reinforced to a couple of dozen troopers who had been ordered to suppress protests and enforce the recently overturned parade ordinance. Now under court order to guard rather than attack Black marchers, the Trooper commander tells Movement leaders he has been "caught by surprise" at this "unexpected" hostile mob. He claims he doesn't have enough men to protect a march, but he promises that if this night's protest is canceled he will bring in reinforcements to protect demonstrations on the following nights.

Movement leaders don't trust him, but they agree to cancel the march for this night only. When the mob realizes no one is going to walk into their ambush they began advancing down Pearl and Cherry Streets toward Belle Flower church where the mass meeting is being held. To their credit, the Troopers hold them a block away so they can't attack the church.

On Sunday the 24th, another huge mob of whites is mobilized by persons unknown to throng the square. Estimated by newsmen at over 1,000, again they are armed with clubs, bats, and chains. Again the Troopers claim they don't have enough men on hand and ask that this march too be canceled. Knowing that continued surrender to intimidation will simply encourage more mob threats, Movement leaders refuse.

Some 200 frightened but determined protesters march two-by-two out of Belle Flower church into the darkness. Demonstrators in Grenada normally sing exuberantly, but on this night they are uncharacteristically silent as they proceed up the dark, unlit Pearl Street towards the downtown square and the violent mob that awaits them.

As the lead marchers turn down Green Street and enter the square they are greeted with furious shouts of "Niggers! Coons! Commies!" and "White Power!" Only a handful of Troopers plus a few cops and deputies are visible. Many of the local lawmen are socializing with members of the white mob whose screams of hate intensify as more and more of the protesters come into view. The lack of strong police presence — and the attitude of those few who are present — is itself an eloquent invitation to mob violence.

But instead of crossing the street onto the central green for the usual rally, the marchers take the whites by surprise, quickly striding past the courthouse and then turning right on 1st Street to exit the square before the mob realizes what's happening. The racist throng gives chase, but again — and again to their credit — a thin line of Troopers block them from following and attacking Belle Flower church. Furious, the mob turns its hate on the newsmedia, attacking reporters, photographers, and TV crews with clubs and chains and smashing cameras. Which results in a new wave of negative publicity for Grenada and Mississippi in the Monday morning press and news broadcasts (Square 5-6).

As is typical for most Grenada marches, the majority of the demonstrators are students (usually about half the total number) and a third are adult women, along with a handful of adult men and SCLC staff members. Though men — ministers mostly — form the visible leadership of the movement, its backbone and core are women and kids (Hartford 9).

In reaction to Monday's bad press, state and local "racial moderates" demand that the state enforce law and order against violent white mobs. An entire company of Troopers is sent to Grenada. They announce that mob rule won't be tolerated. "Moderate" local white leaders chime in, urging whites to avoid the square and ignore Freedom Movement protests. They tell their constituents that if they deprive the press of dramatic newsworthy events — such as mob violence against reporters and cameramen — the media will leave. And they promise that without national publicity in the northern media, Afro-American protests in Grenada will dwindle away to nothing — leaving the old order of tranquil white-supremacy restored.

By that evening, the new "no audience" strategy has begun to take hold — the white mob in the square waiting to attack the freedom marchers is no bigger than 500 — less than half the number of the previous evening. With the Troopers out in force and clearly on guard, some 220 or so protesters are able to march around the green under aerial bombardment of rocks and bottles but without being physically assaulted by bat-wielding thugs.

On Tuesday the 26th, no more than 100 whites show up and the Grenada Freedom Movement resumes nightly rallies on the green. By Wednesday the general pattern of daytime boycott picketing, nightly marches to a square now empty of hostile whites, followed by a rally on the green or a voter registration rally in a Black neighborhood reasserts itself (Square 6-8).

During the week following the resumption of rallies on the square and the power structure's "no audience" campaign, the police make a series of harassment arrests for alleged traffic violations, disturbing the peace, and other trumped up charges. SCLC staff member R.B. Cottenreader is arrested for "touching" a white lady while picketing, four people in a car are arrested for being in the intersection when the light changes to yellow, and so on.

During this period, bogus "Boycott Over" leaflets mysteriously appear in the Negro communities. People are not fooled, and the Blackout continues.

It becomes clear that although our numbers decreased slightly, the "no audience" campaign has failed to stop our marches. The power structure apparently decides to go back to violence (Hartford 10).

Works cited:

Bean, Alan. “Making a stand in Grenada.” Friends of Justice. Web. https://friendsofjustice.blog/2010/12/01/confronting-the-new-jim-crow-part-4/

Hartford, Bruce. “Grenada Mississippi—Chronology of a Movement.” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/info/grenada.htm

“On the Square (July 11-August 6).” ).” The Grenada Freedom Movement (June-December). Civil Rights Movement History: 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm#gren_return

“SCLC Returns to Grenada (June 26-July 10).” The Grenada Freedom Movement (June-December). Civil Rights Movement History: 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm#gren_return